Bad Ink
by inkypearls
Summary: Blaine Anderson is the artist and owner of the most lucrative tattoo parlor in New York City. But he finds he might have bitten off more than he can chew in his pursuit of a particular guest who walks through the front door one day with a chip on his shoulder and more than one secret of his own. Klaine, BadBoy!Blaine
1. Chapter 1

Blaine was tearing the plastic foil wrapping with his teeth when he heard the front door open. The girl in front of him turned at the sound as well, and then redirected her gaze to Blaine's mouth with an eyebrow arched as if to ask _Is that sanitary? _But Blaine's attentions were inadvertently stuck elsewhere.

There were two people in the doorway, one short and the second rather tall, at least to his standards. A man and a woman, the former standing just behind her with a delicate nose wrinkled in an artful moue of distaste.

"Hey," Quinn spoke, standing and smoothly sidling around the front desk, palm outstretched. "Welcome to Warbler's."

"Hello," said the tiny little brunette thing, shaking her hand importantly. "My name is Rachel Barbara Berry."

"You have an appointment today, Miss Rachel Barbara Berry?"

"Yes, at 1 'o' clock this evening with Santana Lopez."

"Mhmm," Quinn hummed, before turning to the second guest and holding out her hand in turn. "And this is…?"

But Blaine didn't get to hear who that was, because the girl in front of him shifted and cleared her throat politely. The man's reply was lost in that blink of a moment, and from the corner of his eye Blaine could see the two shake in greeting. He suddenly wished he hadn't set the iHome's volume so loud. His ears strained to eavesdrop.

"Sorry," Blaine muttered, tonguing impatiently at his lip ring before flapping the foil package in his hand. He smoothed his hand over the girl's naked shoulder and told her to hold still. Out from the packaged slipped the handle of a basic commercial razor, which he grabbed hold of before flicking the wrapping off onto his work bench. With quick efficiency, he swiped the blade over her skin, removing all the fine baby hairs in an absent-minded way that allowed him to keep an ear out for the conversation going on at the front of his shop.

"And what are we doing for you today, Miss…?"

"Rachel is fine, thank you. Today I'm getting the outline done on a new hip piece, which Miss Lopez and I have previously collaborated upon—"

"Yeah, mhmm." Quinn was already heading back to behind the desk, to the open laptop where she began to scroll. "She's out on lunch now, but she left behind a few versions of the stencil, if you wanted to take a look. I'm sure she wouldn't mind."

Blaine was quite sure she would, but he didn't say anything. He set the razor aside, and reached again for the cloth to his right. He dapped some rubbing alcohol along it before wiping down her skin. She was pale as a dove, and her skin was beginning to blush under the ministrations.

When Blaine glanced up again, it was to see Quinn leading Rachel and her unnamed companion to the farthermost corner of the room, to Santana's work station. It was surprisingly neat for someone of her temperament, with photos of particularly memorable pieces tacked to the sides of the full-length mirror to the left of the chair. At least half of them were pieces done on Santana's girlfriend, Brittany.

"Here we are," Quinn said, sliding the heavy black portfolio from on top of her workbench. She rifled through the contents, looking for Rachel's stencils. "So just the outline today?"

"Yes." And with a bit of hesitation, Rachel asked, "Is that odd?" But there was something in her voice that clearly said she was in all actuality hoping for an affirmative answer.

"Kind of. We don't usually split tats into two appointments unless it's a big piece. You know it would be cheaper just to get the whole thing out of the way at once, right? And a lot less painful."

"That's fine, I don't mind the pain. It will only _add_ to the whole experience." She did some strange hand gesture here, a waving motion as if to mimic forming a rainbow.

Her friend snorted, and said the first words Blaine would ever hear him speak. "Says you. I'm the one who's going to have to put up with the bitching over the next two weeks."

"Like I haven't put up with enough from you, Kurt."

Kurt.

_Kurt._

Blaine hummed, and with his head turned away from them he mouthed the name on his lips. It felt nice. He loaded a magnum into his gun, set it aside, and began to pop the lids off a few bottles. He started with a few shades of purple, turquoise and orange, dabbing small portions out into the ink caps.

"I brought a few reference pictures," the girl—Marley, he remembered—said for the tenth time. "I know you don't really need them, but—"

"Marley," Blaine cut her off warily, "when you think on it, you're paying extra for me to not use them. Relax, I've got it."

Before settling himself into the buzzing hum of his work, Blaine allowed himself one last glance, this time focusing solely on the man called Kurt. He was perhaps slightly above average height, long and lean in clothes that wrapped him in tighter than perhaps his own skin. A trim olive vest strapped over a fitted long-sleeved black shirt, buckled in at the small of his back. Carefully distressed indigo jeans that he must've had to fight every inch to pull on. Black boots with heavy soles and an even heavier amount of laces, drawn up to his knees.

Blaine wanted to untie them with his teeth. And he was sure that however long it took Kurt to pull those jeans up Blaine could peel them off in a fraction of the time. Kurt's face was turned, but he had rich brown hair, swept up and neatly coifed. He held himself primly, tightly, tight enough that Blaine had a whole laundry list of ways to loosen him up.

Those were the last thoughts he allowed himself before sinking into the ink. This piece wouldn't take him long, and Santana's habitual punctuality issues assured him that he'd at least catch him on the way out.

He quickly swiped ointment on with yet another towel, covering a much larger area than what would be needed, and let the gun hum to life in his hand. He sensed her tense up, and Blaine muttered, "Don't hold your breath. I've had more than one client faint on me from doing that." This somehow didn't help. "If you feel it gets too much, tap my knee."

Marley murmured a soft, "Okay," but did in fact relax, allowing Blaine to work.

It was with an objective standpoint that Blaine considered his work to be unique, first and foremost because he'd never, not once, used a stencil. Occasionally a reference picture if the client wanted a very specific object included in the design, but Blaine preferred to use his mind's eye. His vision was sharper than most, his ability to recognize and remember a gift many had thought he'd squandered.

Blaine had been born with photographic memory, and this played a specific part in his unique brand of talent. He was able to proportion perfectly, to never forget a single detail. To him, the tattoo was on the skin the moment he began. It was just his hand's job to fill it in.

A second part of his gift was what people most often paid for, and that was his over-exaggerated layering techniques, and the very minimal uses of color that only added to the overall affect. Blaine would start with black, to plant upon the skin an extremely carefully drawn image. It was usually this that his clients wanted, whether it be a bone, a rose, a face. And after free-drawing it into the skin, Blaine would layer upon it outlandishly placed splashes of colors, some in patterns, some not. Or he would draw from his memory a particular pattern—dots, puddles of oil in the street, pin stripes, news print, rust stains—and layer them over the image. Hiding it behind riddles of contrasting inks, creating pieces that transcended any sort of generation. Occasionally he would gridlock the image in incandescent lines of blocks, as if on graphic paper, as if measuring the ink by some strange musical index.

And the third part that made his work so sought after was the way the pieces would _sing_.

From the very first tattoo he'd done, to this piece of an empty birdcage on Marley's shoulder, it was like song lyrics carved into skin. The ink brought to mind a different beat of melody, a different frame of mind, _voices. _The ink gun sang in Blaine's hand, and its song dug into the skin deeper than his ink. And what he heard when he'd first seen her, what the needle was humming into her skin, was something soft and whimsical. The words were sighed out like slow-acting poison. A delicate little thorn in his parlor chair.

Blaine hadn't know whether to shut the door on the bird cage or not, and he hadn't decided until he was drawing it in. He swiped a damp, sterile cloth over her skin, wiping away the blood from the sealed door. It wasn't empty, but it was _waiting._

He heard the door open and close a few times, and some time into the tattoo session he heard Santana's voice, but didn't bother himself to listen in. Blaine's mind was dredged in the voices of the beautiful and dying.

The coloring on her vintage bird cage was two-fold. A faint, fuzzy blue haloed the little swing inside the cage, and plumed softly from the lock. In dark red, weaving sideways and again vertically behind the cage itself, were the words _Escape Artist _written backwards in normative typeface font. The letters were perhaps the most time consuming, but he finally trailed off. He wrote the very last few letters of the final line in black.

He wiped the tattoo off one more time, and sat back to look. After such a long pause when he hadn't stopped once, Marley glanced over her shoulder.

"It's done," Blaine said, stretching back on his bench and popping his shoulders. He glanced at the clock. The tattoo had taken just under four hours. "Go take a look."

Marley stumbled a bit as she stood, clutching a towel to the front of her chest. As she walked shakily to the mirror, Blaine cast a glance over towards Santana's station. She sat behind Rachel, who had her top pulled up to just below her bust, and leggings pulled down just slightly. Blaine couldn't see the tattoo, and he couldn't see Kurt's face either. His back was to Blaine, and he appeared to be holding Rachel's hand in both of his.

"Lana Del Ray."

Blaine looked back to Marley, who wasn't actually looking at him. She stood marveling in the mirror, fingers almost lax on the towel, eyes mesmerized and slightly wet.

"I'd heard you liked the bad boys, honey," Blaine said, and cracked the first smile since she'd walked into his shop.

When Marley was finally able to tear her eyes away, Blaine snapped a shot for his portfolio, and another with Marley's phone at her request, before coating the tattoo in ointment and pressing a clean bandage over it. He taped along the edges, and watched as she gingerly edged her shirt down over it.

"Keep that bandage on for the next twelve hours," Blaine instructed her as they walked to the front of the shop. "After that, you can take it off. Wash it with warm water only, pat it dry, and then add some more ointment. I'll give that to you before you go. Some people scab, others don't, it all depends on you."

"How long do I have to use bandages for?"

"A week, or when it stops feeling tender. You got a driver's license on you?"

"Oh, yeah, hold on…"

As Marley dug through her purse for her debit card and ID, Blaine looked back towards Santana. Kurt's face was still turned.

"Why didn't you call me over to see?" Quinn asked when they reached the front desk, Marley pulling out her wallet finally.

"Sorry, forgot," Blaine said, keeping a few feet from the desk while Marley excitedly opened the photo of it on her phone to show Quinn.

"It was a pleasure," Blaine said, reaching out to shake Marley's hand. When she placed hers in his, he brought it up to kiss the side of her palm, making her laugh and blush. He smirked, and backed away when Quinn shot him a _look_.

Instead of heading to his workstation to clean up, Blaine headed straight over to Santana's. He was free for the rest of the afternoon, and only had plans of sketching out a few ideas for clients coming in later on in the week. There was time.

He had to see that face.

Naturally, Blaine knew that when someone had a body like that, karma balanced things out in the most unfortunate of ways. Kurt's face couldn't match up to that ass, which wouldn't necessarily pose a problem as eye contact wasn't required for the things Blaine intended to do to him. Or he could have the vocabulary of a grade school girl, a completely two-dimensional personality, the wits of a pastor, perhaps more baggage than a luxury cruise liner. There would undoubtedly be something, if not all of those, but Blaine wouldn't mind putting up with all that for the short period of time it would take him to wreck that perfectly kept hair, to trace out the marks of his veins with his mouth only to leave marks of his own, to hook his hands under his knees and spread him open, and then open him up.

"Hey, Santana," Blaine said when he finally reached the trio, feeling uncommonly lucky as Santana was just putting down her tattoo gun and reaching for a cloth to give the ink one final pat down. "Let me see what you're working on."

"No one's stopping you, Anderson," Santana replied coolly. Blaine peeked over her shoulder for one brief moment to see a pretty outline of a treble alone with an empty set of bars stretching for a few counts past it. Tiny inked birds were perched on them.

That was all Blaine saw of the tattoo. He saw Rachel peek curiously over her shoulder at him, and then Kurt finally turned to face him. Somewhere beneath his heart, but above his stomach, Blaine felt the breath crackle in his lungs like electricity.

The pale skin of his neck matched his face. There wasn't a hint of a blemish, only a vague tint of pale rose on his cheeks like his skin had been spray painted on. His lips were flushed and wide, a perfect little Cupid's brow perched beneath a long, elegant nose. His browns were perfectly accented, as if slashed there by the casual flick of a paintbrush. Elfin ears, pointed slightly beneath his hair. And the eyes. The eyes were what broke him. Blaine would later go on through his extensive collection of colors to try and match the ink, and he would find that their color was the single thing in the world he was unable to memorize, to commit to memory. They were like the shine of glass beneath a pool of rainwater on the streets, some eerie mix of grays and blues and greens that Blaine had never seen the likes of.

Those eyes _sang_ like a tattoo themselves, and like a tattoo gun they buzzed into Blaine's head and stuck there. Lyrics Blaine couldn't decipher, and the tone some sort of roar that deafened him. Heavy piano, the gentle thrums of a bass, a deep drumming heart. Like a rhapsody written for the end of the world.

There was a sharp elbow slammed entirely too close to his crotch for comfort, and he glared at Santana who had the nerve to smirk at him. "What do you think of the tattoo?"

He'd been too entranced by the eyes to keep track of the rest of Kurt's face, which had stained a darker hue of pink at the attention. He sponged up a few extra seconds, during which Kurt's eyebrow inch into a sardonic arch. He had long, thick lashes, now that Blaine took in his face as a whole. A slim bone structure. And were those freckles?

Finally he looked back at the outline of the tattoo. From behind the treble bloomed the outline of a rose, and taking that into consideration… "The birds are the thorns?"

"My idea, when she wouldn't budge on the breed of flower."

"Roses are deeply symbolic to me," Rachel said huffily.

Before she could enumerate on the reasons why, Santana said, "They are to everyone, sweets." Normally Santana might keep her tongue in cheek with clients before lashing out her true opinions to them later. Perhaps she, like Blaine, picked up on the sense that this girl could handle it.

"Well I'm not everyone, so I'm safe from the rose tattoo cliché," Rachel sniffed. "Is it done, can I see it?"

"Sure. C'mon, up you get. Mirror's right there."

Rachel's hand fell from Kurt's as she made for the mirror. Blaine didn't miss the sardonic way Kurt looked at the ink.

"Oh, it's beautiful," Rachel gushed, twisting her hips a bit to see it at a new angle. Blaine spared her euphoric face a last glance before leaving Santana to wallow in her praise. He turned his attentions back to Kurt.

"And what about you, Kurt." The name felt as good leaving his lips as it sounded in his head. "What are we getting you today?"

"I'm sorry," Kurt said, forced politeness in every syllable. "But who are you?"

Blaine smirked, but it was Santana who answered for him.

"This is Blaine Anderson," she drawled. She had her camera out, and was attempting to make Rachel stand still for a shot. "This is his studio."

"Oooh!" Santana hissed her indignation as Rachel twister her way out of her grip. "I've done a great deal of research on your work, Mr. Anderson, and I might say I am quite impressed with what you do."

"It's Blaine," was all he said.

"Kurt," Rachel said, "I showed you his portfolio online, remember the tattoos I showed you last night?"

"I remember." Rachel didn't seem to catch the sarcasm, but Blaine did all too well.

"And what did you think?" Blaine asked, tilting his hip to lean on the back of the chair.

Kurt blinked coolly up at him, one leg crossed to balance an ankle over his knee. He had his pretty face leaning on one gently furled fist. Blaine could see straight between his legs, and lord bless skinny jeans….

"I won't pretend to know much about tattoos," Kurt finally answered in diplomatic tones.

"Even better," Blaine replied. Santana was looking at him now, brow cocked. "An objective standpoint. So what did you think?"

Kurt licked his bottom lip to wet it before speaking, forcing Blaine to shift his suddenly uncomfortable posture. Santana was definitely looking now.

"They were nice," he said after a long pause.

Nice. _Nice_. Suddenly, the blood boiling in Blaine's veins had nothing to do with lust. Well, perhaps a little.

"Ignore him," Rachel recommended, wincing as Santana applied ointment to her new ink before pressing gauze to it. "He doesn't approve of tattoos."

Blaine hadn't realized that Kurt had been wearing a façade the entire time until it slipped for a few crucial seconds. "It will never come _off, _Rachel."

"God, you sound like my dads…"

"Keep the gauze on for at least twelve hours," Santana intoned.

"Your dads are actually rather fabulous, so I don't much resent the comparison."

"You sound like an old man, then."

"Shall I go ahead and tell your fathers you're calling them old?"

"Wash with lukewarm water, no soap for at least three days," Santana said, picking at her nails.

Anger momentarily forgotten, Blaine's eyes bounced back and forth.

"If you detest them so much, why did you follow me here?"

"Follow you, you blackmailed me, you pulled every dirty card out of your very limited deck—"

"Fine! Then don't come next time!"

"Wait, no." Blaine was ignored.

Santana typed away on her phone as she said, "Call us back if the skin remains puffy and red after three days, you shouldn't get much scarring from an outline but all the same, do give us a call back with any questions."

Kurt threw his hands in the air. "Then I won't!"

"Good."

"_Great_."

"If you head on up to Quinn she'll handle your payment today. See you in a week, sweets."

"Wait…" But Blaine was ignored again as the two stalked up towards the front desk, where Quinn was waiting with a bemused expression on her face. Blaine blinked after them, and when he looked down he met that look of Santana's again.

"I'd hurry on after him if I were you, baby," she purred. "Before you miss your shot at getting up on dat ass."

Blaine snorted, but left her to it. He ran one hand through his hair, gently gelled spikes springing back up from the attention. By the time he arrived at the counter, Rachel was signing a receipt and jabbering away about appointment times for the following week to Quinn, Kurt standing to the side and shifting impatiently.

Blaine sidled up, making to look like he was looking at the booking times with her as he said, "Sorry for the improper introduction just now. But I'm Blaine. I wanted to thank you for coming into my shop today."

"Rachel," she replied brightly, smiling at him. It seemed more genuine now. "I did extensive research before making my appointment here today. You've quite the reputation."

Blaine shrugged. "We do a business." They did a business at what was probably the most expensive tattoo shop in New York City, to be more precise. She was wearing workout clothes, but nice jewelry. Her hair looked healthy, her nails freshly manicured, subtle but expensive looking makeup. She had money, even more clearly indicated by dishing out well over two thousand dollars for such a minimal tattoo.

Blaine looked back up to Kurt. "So, not much into ink, are you?"

"Not particularly."

"Any reason? Besides the non-negotiable permanence?"

"I wouldn't want to bore you with the reasons."

"Oh go on, bore me." So that I can justify boring you into a bed later on.

Kurt eyed Blaine's face critically, and he tried seeing things from his perspective. Three piercings in his left eyebrow, nose ring, snakebites, and tongue ring. Tattoo'd neck, and on the left side of his face, between the crease of his eye and his ear, was a tattoo of a red X, dulled with time, in an unusual shape. Sloped at all edges, fatter at the four corners, artfully piercing in its center.

"Where'd you get that tattoo?" Kurt asked instead of answering. "The little 'x'." He tapped his own left temple.

Blaine frowned a bit, but again, someone answered for him.

"He never answers that one," Quinn drawled. But she was eyeing him with interest. "Part of his whole badboy motif, I'm sure, his little mystery."

"Fuck off," Blaine muttered sullenly.

Kurt hummed. The noise went straight down Blaine's spine. "Then I suppose we both have questions we don't want to answer, don't we, Mr. Anderson."

"It's Blaine," he snapped for the second time that day. Kurt merely smirked, and there was nothing more that he wanted to do in that moment then to wipe it off his face. His anger said to hit it straight off, and his erection said to either smother it in a pillow or make it so that mouth really couldn't move much at all around his—

But Kurt abruptly turned on his heel and strode out before Blaine could think of anything wittier to follow it up with.

"Kurt!" Rachel called before softly cursing under her breath. She hurried out after him, clutching the bottle of ointment to her chest, the door banging shut behind her.


	2. Chapter 2

By Friday, Blaine had all but given the idea up.

It had been three days since Rachel and Kurt had paid his shop a visit, an abnormally long period of time for Blaine to be hung up on any one person. This was considering Blaine seldom got "hung up" on anyone. But he'd gotten the tick out of his system last night, and after haven woken up alone in his bed with Sebastian thankfully gone, he felt… not calmer, really. Muted, less on edge. Which was good, as he had a full sleeve to do this morning. The client was visiting from California, and needed it done by the end of the day. So Blaine arrived at his shop before the sun was even barely risen, cars behind him a thrum that stuttered with traffic. October had peaked early that day, and his lips tingled with a glorious chill. The streets smelled like ozone, like sweet, like people and coffee and smoke.

When he tried the keys in door, he was surprised to find it already open. Frowning, Blaine pushed at the door and admitted himself. The parlor lights were off, but the strobes that remained on constantly provided just enough glow to see by.

He heard footsteps, and Quinn's voice saying, "Hey—" and immediately trailing off when she rounded the corner and spotted Blaine standing there, already tugging his jacket off and shoving his keys in its pocket. "You're ridiculously early, what are you doing here?"

"Back at you," Blaine said, moving past her towards his station. He threw his jacket on the desk, sending several things toppling over, before tugging the top drawer open and plucking out a few packaged needles. "I have a Wes coming in here at eight, he's getting a full sleeve. He'll be here in an hour."

"I thought he wasn't due in til nine, and even that's pushing it with you."

"It was a personal favor."

"You know him?"

Blaine didn't reply except to pull his work bench closer, sliding it open to reveal bottle upon bottle of ink. A full arm piece, it had been on his mind for a month ever since the appointment had been made. An entire _arm_, his fingers practically trembled at the thought.

"You told me the appointment was at nine," Quinn insisted.

"Well I fucking changed it," Blaine finally snapped. "I own this place, I can change them if I want to."

"You need to _tell me _so I can adjust the ledger."

"What the fuck for? He's my only appointment today, it's no big deal, so mind your own—"

It was then that the reason behind Quinn's upset walked through the door. He stopped on the doorstep upon spotting Blaine, before drawing himself up that extra inch (the long, long lines and angles of him) and marching over to Quinn, portfolio tucked under his arm.

Blaine stopped to stare a moment. Kurt looked like he'd walked out straight from some sort of hipster blog. Knee-high boots, skinny black jeans, gray pea coat, heavily draped cotton scarf with subtle paisley pattern. Hair, of course, immaculate, cheeks and nose pinched pink from the cold.

It was more annoying to Blaine than anything that despite having worked it thoroughly from his system the night before, every inch of his skin suddenly felt starved of touch. His fingers craved to feel and wreck, and every clean part of him wanted to be dirty with sweat and hot from too much skin.

But the ignorant object of his attentions was determinedly ignoring him, conversing with Quinn in pointedly hushed tones, back to Blaine. Which was a shame. The coat fit to his waistline snugly, but the cut really cropped out the money shot.

Suddenly remembering that this was his damn chance, and that he had a right to know why people were showing up before hours, he made his way back to the front desk where Kurt was closing the portfolio and pushing it towards Quinn.

"If you could," Kurt said, still refusing to look at Blaine.

"If she could what?" Blaine asked, stopping just short of too close. "Morning, Kurt."

Kurt didn't bother to return the pleasantry. "Something for Santana," he said stiffly.

"Oh?"

"And none of your business."

"This is my business, so of course it is."

"It's Rachel monstrosity of a mistake," Kurt said waspishly, and the jab hit Blaine at a surprisingly personal level. "And clearly I've made one myself in agreeing to come here in her stead. If you'll excuse me…"

As Kurt began to walk away, Blaine thought several things over quickly in his head. Blood roared through his veins, a good part petitioning towards a very inconvenient part of his anatomy that would help him to his job at all today. But how much more satisfying it would seem, knowing that the whole day would end in one hell of a fuck? An ending to a very long session, in which his muscles would be so strung up tight. Because instead of his energy draining the longer he worked, it built like a bonfire and he needed something to waste it on before having any chance of relaxing. Or in this case, someone.

"Hey, Kurt, hold up."

Kurt did, with an exaggerated sigh and cocky tilt to his head, looking _down _at Blaine in a way he certainly didn't appreciate. Blaine wanted him looking up, looking_ way _up, wanted those narrow eyes wide and begging and for that mouth to follow. And there was just so much unmarked _skin_ that Blaine could paint tattoos on with his tongue, the chance to imagine biting ink into his veins, tattooing him and marking him until he fell apart between the sheets and finally broke for one damn second. Blaine wanted to break that façade _for _him, it would be the perfect way to end a day like this.

"You're a student, right?" Blaine asked, sidling up and pushing his hands into his pockets. Arching his shoulders, standing straight, feet spread slightly apart, and he _knew _what the flicker in Kurt's eyes meant, it was the most obvious thing in the world to Blaine. He knew what lust was when he saw it. This would be the easy part.

"…how did you know that?" Kurt asked slowly, one eyebrow slowly rising.

Blaine answered, "You seem it. Stressful, being a student in a city like this while all the fun goes on around you. I think you need to loosen up a bit…"

Blaine knew very well the difference between juvenile romance and a relationship between adults, or in this case, the lack of one. The idea of a commitment-free affair became more feasible as one grew older, when schedules were too busy, people too set in their ways to ever possibly change for another human being, hearts too hesitant to ever leave your chest and gallop after someone else's.

That's what Blaine saw when he looked at Kurt. He didn't see romantic dinners, or meeting parents, late-night movies, lovers' spats over who forgot to take out the trash, sharing circles of friends, sharing a _home_. He saw the convenience of a mutual sexual attraction, the benefits without the insecurities and inconveniences of a relationship. It was a well-used formula—to go out for drinks, to have maybe half of one before moving on to a bed—preferably Kurt's, to give Blaine the freedom of leaving whenever he wanted.

And from then on, a text would be all it took. A text, a date, a time, and they'd do it all over again without ever having the expectations of anything more, nor the pretense that anything was going anywhere beyond a decent orgasm.

A drink, a bed, and again until they got bored. It was simple.

"So maybe we could grab a coffee some time."

Fuck. _What_.

For a moment, Blaine couldn't believe that the words had come from his mouth. But Kurt was staring at him, flabbergasted. Quinn had looked up to stare from over her magazine, having watched him work the same routine for so long in so many variations that it seemed to have derailed her entire perception of him. Blaine snapped his mouth shut, as if to somehow take the words back. Coffee. _Coffee_. Coffee didn't come before sex, it didn't even come in the evening, it came in mornings and afternoons leaving agape an entire empty evening that wouldn't get Blaine anywhere he wanted to be. It would get him sitting across from Kurt in some teenage-esque coffee shop, drinking some fruity latte and eating too-sweet biscotti. It would leave room for conversation that went beyond small talk, hell it would lead to _talking_, it would lead to noticing and above all noticing what shade those eyes took under a different lighting.

But before Blaine could somehow correct himself, Kurt was speaking. It was the first time he'd ever spoken Blaine's name, and that brought it into sharper focus. "Blaine, I wouldn't share a cup of coffee with you unless it was to pour it onto your crotch. And although I love a good homage to classic rom coms as much as the next gay, I think I'll save us both the pain and time."

He was out the door before Blaine could think of a good excuse to stop him.

Four hours later still found Blaine in a scorched mood. Wes was used to this type of attitude, and ignored it mostly. He was the quiet type, and took Blaine's foul temper in his stride and obediently sat as still as a tree.

Santana ambushed him in the back office when Web and Blaine took a brief break. With his tattoo wrapped in seran wrap, Wes had departed down the block for a coffee and a club sandwich. Having declined an offer for lunch, Blaine threw himself down onto the couch, digging through his pocket for a pack and a lighter. This was where Santana found him, aggressively smoking his second cigarette.

"What the hell overdosed and died in your loose-ended asshole?" Santana snapped, blazing through the door with Quinn treading smoothly behind her.

Blaine didn't spare her a glance. "I'm not paying you for this shit."

"My talent pays for _itself_."

"Fucking god, go back to your corner then."

Quinn interrupted their tirade as she dug in the minifridge for her lunch. "Our little Blainey Days asked someone out today."

Unable to find any existing curse apt enough to coincide with the retort in his head, Blaine shot her a glare his ironic manners usually kept him from giving women.

"Oh?" Santana purred, instantly all coy smiles. "Really? Anyone I know?"

"That Kurt kid from Monday," Quinn replied before Blaine could stop her. "He was the one with Rachel." She smirked, popping the lid from a tupperware container of salad as Santana strode across the room, swung a chair around, and sat on it backwards. "He invited him out for _coffee_."

"Coffee? Oh _wow!_" Santana fluttered her eyelash, wiggled her shoulders, and delicately interlaced her fingers beneath her shoulders as she leaned further over the chair. "How darling. Is it a date then? You know it's only a date if you hold hands_."_

"Blaine won't be holding anything, hands or otherwise," Quinn interjected. "Because someone got rejected."

Santana's face suddenly looked exactly like a child's would on Christmas morning, and Blaine felt the sudden urge to make himself very scarce indeed. He crammed his unfinished cigarette into the ashtray with far more force than was strictly necessary, and flipped open the lid of his MacBook with equal roughness.

"Oh Blaine," Santana breathed, lethal glee in her eye. "Oh you poor _baby_."

"Fuck off," Blaine grouched, pulling up his e-mail account with several stabs at the keyboard. "I'm not paying you to patronize me."

Santana bulldozed through that. "That's gotta be so rough for you. What was it that turned him off? Was it the invitation to meet your parents? Was the promise ring too much, too soon?"

Ignoring all this, Blaine said, "I wouldn't say he was necessarily turned off."

"Me neither," Quinn agreed. "He'd have to be _on _for that to happen."

Santana's laugh cracked like a whip, making Quinn smirk. "So did he have _anything _to say to your little love declaration? Does he already have a butt buddy on the side? Is he saving himself for Mr. Right? Or, plot twist, Misses Right?"

"It's not fucking like that and you know it," Blaine finally snapped, stabbing away at the keyboard and not caring at all that his anger was probably fairly transparent in the reply he was writing to a client inquiring about details and pricing for a back piece. That tattoo would be a bitch on the spine, though, so she might as well get used to it.

"Blaine," Quinn said slowly, "you asked him out for coffee. On a date, you poof."

"Well yeah, does he seem like a fucking frat boy to you two? Pay attention for a goddamn moment, it's not hard, he wasn't gonna go for drinks." And as Blaine said that, it started to make sense. What he'd said earlier was, in retrospect, quite clever. Kurt struck Blaine as the type who'd much rather sit over a cup of coffee than over-priced and over-water cocktails and tap beer. He'd still said no, but regardless…

"He still said no," Quinn voiced his thoughts, slinking down to sit next to Santana.

"So he's playing a bit hard to get at, probably thinks it's cute. I probably came off too… interested, maybe. Once we get all our intentions hammered out, it'll be easy. Maybe even easier."

"And by intentions, you mean you just want a quick fuck," Santana clarified, a rare note of approval in her voice.

"No shit," Blaine muttered, finishing off his e-mail and hitting Send before flipping the lid shut. Wes would be back any minute, and he had gorgeous work to do. He was too busy to be worrying so much over nothing.

"Not all men are obsessed with sex," drawled Quinn, while Santana shook her head in dismay at her.

"Trust me, he's a guy," Blaine argued, standing and heading for the door. "He was born with that second, stupid brain. All I have to do is make sure he does a bit more of his thinking with it."

That morning Blaine surveyed himself almost critically in the mirror, tugging at the ripped neckline of his shirt. He had torn quite a few shirt collars in order to bear the tattoo beneath, a black bowtie that was inked so impeccably it seemed like it would feel like real silk if touched. It was tugged taught underneath a similarly designed collar that wrapped around the circumference of his neck. From beneath the collar, whose cloth wrinkled and bulged in spots, were thick metallic stalks and vines, with leaves as sharp and unforgiving as steel. And choked between the shrapnel, pierced deeply by the metal thorns of the artificial mechanic vines, were rich white gardenia that somehow still grew. That breathed with a life of their own, despite how impossible and broken their existence seemed.

He rubbed a thin amount of gel in-between his hands before running them backwards through his hair, dragging the curls momentarily straight before they immediately bounced back. He'd chosen matching obsidian pieces for the piercings on his face and ears, and smeared a thin smudge of black liner alone the outer corners of his eyes. The small X on the corner of his face was only half visible beneath a lock of stray hair.

Blaine touched a finger to it gently, scraping its edges with his nails as if expecting it to peel away like paint. Then he flicked the bathroom light off, checked his pockets for wallet and phone, and grabbed his keys on the way out the door.

When Blaine arrived at Warbler's, it was to a twice-familiar scene. Rachel was there again, and from this angle Blaine could see the tattoo Santana appeared to be just finishing. It was lush in color, the music bars done in green and gray, and the thorn-like birds both attached and in flight seemingly jumping off her skin. Santana was touching up the edges of a rose petal when Blaine walked up behind them.

Kurt was there, of course. Again holding Rachel's hand and, again, ignoring Blaine's very existence. He seemed almost bored, although wincing slightly as Rachel strangled his hand.

"Just in time, Anderson," Santana said, drawing back and giving Rachel's tattoo a last wipe down. "Go check it out, sweetie."

Rachel, who'd just glanced over her shoulder to see Blaine, took the time to throw Kurt an extremely pointed smirk. It was met with a look of absolute disdain, but Blaine's interest was certainly piqued.

Rachel rose gingerly to her feet to make her way to the mirror, leaving Kurt to sit alone there. While Santana went to stand beside Rachel, Blaine carefully watched Kurt's face. He wore an interesting, if subdued expression. It was difficult to read the gentle nuances in such a carefully stoic face. His pretty mouth was set in an uninterested line, eyes half-lidded as if about to fall asleep out of boredom. But his stiff posture bellied all that. Shoulders still ramrod straight, legs delicately crossed over the other, hands primly crossed over his knees. Blaine wished he wouldn't. He didn't have a type, necessarily, but he loved to wreck the pretty and beautiful. Symmetry was his enemy, chaos his crutch. Kurt couldn't know, obviously, what his just sitting there did to Blaine but damn it all if Blaine didn't blame him anyway.

"Gorgeous," Blaine said, causing Kurt to narrow his eyes at him. Smirking, he looked into Rachel's eyes in the mirror. "Perfect placement."

"Thank you," Rachel gushed while Santana preened.

"Know what it could use?" Blaine walked up to her, tilted his head, and placed a forefinger just above the flower. "Maybe some old music scores, running down vertically behind the rose."

Santana bit at the inside of her cheek, eyes narrowed, before nodding slightly. "What color?"

"Orange or brown, to mimic something older?"

"Gold."

"Gold would work."

Rachel's face looked excited, but what drew Blaine's attention was the impatient exhalation behind him. Blaine peered over at the perpetrator, and felt smug to know that Kurt's gaze was fixed solely on him.

"That's a cute face." It came out as more of a sneer than Blaine intended it to, but there was no way of taking it back. "But rather than get jealous, I'd be happy to ink you, too."

Kurt's eyes flashed. "If you come anywhere _near me _with that thing," he gestured to Santana's tattoo gun, which she promptly rose and took aim at him with from her place beside Rachel, "and I'll use it tattoo right up your—"

"So do you want the detailing or not?" Santana said, affectively cutting the two off. "Free of charge."

"Ooh, yes!"

"_No_."

Rachel shot him a look. "It's not your body, Kurt."

"You don't even know for sure what he's going to put on you, Rachel, you seem to think this stuff is like Sharpe but it is _not going to come off._" Before Rachel could say anything else, Kurt rounded on Blaine, but not with what Blaine was expecting. "You want to spread your egotistical, nonsensical nonsense on other's people skin, fine, shame on anyone who lets you. But you're not doing anything to Rachel's tattoo unless you show her what it is first."

Blaine's eyebrow show up, and he began to chew at the inside of his snakebites again, a habit he could have sworn he'd kicked. "Can't really do that."

"Do one of those pictures, on paper. Show her and then _if she says yes_…"

"No can do, baby," Blaine cut him off, feeling like everything about this day wasn't anywhere near his expectations. "I don't use stencils."

"Excuse me?"

"Open your ears and I wouldn't have to. I don't use fucking stencils."

"I heard you, you insufferable cad, but how hard can it be to draw it on a piece of paper."

"That's not how I work you arrogant _shit_…" And Blaine just wanted to shut him _up…_

"Wow." Kurt let out an exaggerated huff of air, flinging back into his seat and crossing his arms over his chest, head cocked. "Aren't you such a precious, special _little_," oh Blaine couldn't tell if he wanted to fuck him or fuck him and then _kill_ him, "genius then, how foolish of me to assume you'd _ever _sink so low as to do anything _normal_."

"We do have a private room for this sort of thing," Santana pointed out.

Ignoring the testosterone-fueled dispute going on behind her, Rachel contemplated breezily, "I do think I'll leave it how it is, but thank you, Mr. Anderson. I believe that an original work of art needs ample time to be appreciated before any rudimentary artistic differences should be made to it."

"The worst part of this is," Santana said, eyes drawn back to Rachel, "that you're not even sarcastic. This is legitimately how you are."

"You know, I was serious about that tattoo," Blaine said in quiet tones, stepping closer to where Kurt sat still on the stool. He stopped, and then took a pointed step forward, deliberately placing himself too close for a seemingly casual conversation. Kurt very clearly noticed, a twinge of pink blushing high on his cheeks. "I'll cut you a good price."

Kurt breathed deeply, in and out, and said through gritted teeth, "It's amazing how you can keep a business, if this is how you treat customers." He stood up from the chair slowly and gracefully. The boots he wore today put him a good several inches above Blaine, but the height difference didn't have the menacing affect Kurt probably hoped it would.

"Oh, so you _would_ like to be a customer."

Kurt said nothing, seemingly at a loss for words at the accusation. The accomplishment of wrong-footing Kurt was _delicious_.

"How about hanging around with me a little longer, I'll even _sketch _shit out for you, since you're so fixed on the idea. Check out some of my work. I haven't met anyone yet who I haven't been able to convince otherwise."

"Wow," Kurt sneered, having finally found his voice. "You possess the exceptionally rare capability of coercing someone into doing something they never wanted in the first place. Your mother must be so proud."

"My mother's a homophobic bitch who wouldn't be proud of me if I cured cancer," Blaine replied in such an off-handed way that Kurt's jaw fell agape. Blaine grinned at him, tilting his head to the side, because that was Kurt struck dumb twice in as many minutes and this was just getting easier and _easier_. "So since you've gone ahead and insulted me, possibly scarring me for life, I think the least you could do to make it up to me is let me buy you a cup of coffee."

Kurt snorted his disdain, but his words held less venom than Blaine knew he longed to fill them with. "You're still stuck on that. _Coffee_? Are we high schoolers now?"

"Wouldn't know. Never made much of a student, baby." This was only partially true. He did, but only up until his eighteenth birthday in the eleventh grade.

"Stop calling me that, I have a name you ignoramus, you're not my boyfriend and you don't get to pick out cutesy little nicknames."

"Oh, excuse me, am I stepping in someone's territory?"

"Are you attempting," Kurt said slowly, "to ask, in your eloquent and oh so subtle way, if I'm _single_?"

"How retarded of me, of course you are, who the fuck is going to put up with such a shit ton of so much bitching—"

"Kurt! Stop flirting and come take a picture for my blog!"

Of course Rachel had brought an actual camera.

Blaine thought he heard Kurt muttered, "As if," as he made his way to Rachel, and he smirked at his back. But before Kurt had the chance to entirely pass him, Blaine darted a hand out. It was anything essentially lecherous, just a pass of his palm skimming along his hip. But nevertheless, it had the desired effect. Kurt's eye flew back to him, blown wide with… not surprise. Something different. But the blush was back, and he looked to be teetering on the edge of saying something before he turned back to Rachel.

Blaine's hand flexed. He could feel the warmth of him through Kurt's jeans.

Leaving the two to bicker over lighting with Santana making unhelpful suggestions on the sidelines, Blaine made his way into the backroom. He'd brought his iPad with him today, and on it was a portfolio of work he wasn't quite accustomed to showing customers. It was slightly… prettier, perhaps. More colorful, more avante guard, less metropolitan. Blaine had initially brought up the tattoo as just a liner, but as with the offer for coffee, once the words were out of his mouth they began to take route. This seemed to be how Blaine's mind worked; like his tattooing. He had to see the idea before him before he ever knew what it was about.

And now, he was thinking of that skin in a very different viewpoint. Not that Blaine could ever say he separated his work from play; he'd tattooed quite a few partners in the past, even let one or two tattoo _him_. But all that tightly-constrained emotion, that rigid posture, the poise and the ice of him, he needed something to wear on his sleeve. Kurt needed _ink_, something to mark his carefully constructed armor with to show that somewhere beneath the scowl and the utter bitchiness of him, there was a heart. Deep down. Quite possibly very deep down.

Fuck the coffee. Fuck drinks. Blaine could tattoo him on this chair, he could fuck him on this chair with fresh ink, Blaine's ink, shining on his skin.

And now he had a boner. Fantastic.

Blaine had to stop himself in the backroom for several long minutes, simultaneously thinking and trying very hard not to think at all. Kurt, inked. Something small and hard to see? Something that you could only see half of before it dipped beneath his clothes? A song with lyrics wrenched in ennui, or an instrumental with no lyrics to speak of but the ones Blaine would permanently etch into his skin?

And Blaine would know it was there, and the possessiveness wasn't anything new. Every artist felt some amount of pride over their work, but this worked quite a bit deeper under Blaine's skin because it would be _on Kurt_. Maybe some place only Blaine would know about. A shoulder piece for him to stare at as he bent his body to just how he liked it. An arm tattoo he could lick and bite at while trying to keep him from thrashing. Something on his thigh to clutch when those long, long legs straddled Blaine's waist and Kurt _rode _him until the edges of the earth shattered.

The pants Blaine was wearing were really quite inconvenient for this problem.

So he got his iPad, flicked it to life, and busied himself looking for the folder. It made much more sense now, his own motivations. Why he was so determined to get this one. Blaine wanted to give him a tattoo, and Kurt wasn't the first he'd had ambitions like that for. And like those before him, it wouldn't take much. Some careful flattery, roguish charm, maybe some gentle but passive aggressive taunting.

From an objective standpoint, Blaine realized, it very much mirrored how he got people into bed.

When he finally left the backroom, iPad tucked under his arm, Rachel and Kurt were once again at the front. Or more like, Kurt was rudely waiting at the door for Rachel to finish payment. His jacket was already on, and his eyes trained to his phone. He was jabbing at it rather angrily. Blaine could relate.

Blaine suddenly realized, he had yet to see Kurt smile. An odd thing, after meeting someone three times to have never seen them once crack a grin. Kurt's mouth seemed permanently set in an admittedly very attractive frown.

"How is it students can keep on skipping classes during the weekdays?" Blaine asked as he finally drew level with Kurt at the door.

Kurt replied with a curt, "None of your business."

Gritting his teeth, and forcing a smile on his lips, Blaine asked, "So since you're already playing hooky, would you honor me with your company a while longer?" His proper tones were teasing, but Blaine made a point to slowly look Kurt from head to toe, pausing at all the best places, so Kurt would _know_. So hopefully, with a few cleared intentions, he could calm down…

"Believe it or not, I have better things to do with my time than hang out amidst bad decisions and punk rock arts and crafts projects."

Oh this was like pulling teeth. "Christ, would it hurt you to lighten up and crack a smile every now and then?" he finally asked, exhaling roughly, hand coming up to scuff his hair as his own smile dropped from his face.

"I don't look good when I smile," Kurt replied in a monotone, still not looking up from his phone. "Leave me alone."

"Oh right, right," Blaine said in tones dripping with false sincerity because he had just about had enough, but didn't know why he couldn't stop himself. This should not be this _hard _when it was supposed to be so _easy_. "You only look good standing there like a stuck up tease, excuse me—"

But Blaine didn't get to finish the insult, because Kurt _snapped._

Blaine stumbled a step backward as Kurt's phone narrowly missed his nose. Two fingers jabbed in Blaine's direction, every line of his body seemingly to shake; Blaine felt no small amount of satisfaction that he'd finally managed to make a crack in that mask of his, even if it was a bad one.

"Listen to me, you self-absorbed, irrefutably meaningless waste of space. Whatever is going through that clusterfuck you call a thought process, don't you dare think for one single second that you'll find a fuck with me because I have never been less interested in my entire life and Anderson, _I grew up in Ohio. _So go peddle your STD's to someone who ever gave less than a rat's turd about themselves, because I have some amount of self-respect and every moment I spend in your company is a moment I will _never get back_."

And for the second time, Kurt stormed out right in front of his eyes, pace showing no signs of waiting for his companion. Blaine craned his head back a bit to catch a glimpse of a very angry silhouette before it turned a corner and was out of sight. Two seconds later, Rachel went barreling after him, cutting Blaine a look. He expected her to look angry, but the expression on her face was far from it, if not totally unreadable. She seemed to be considering him for a split second before she too was gone from his shop.

"Hmm," Quinn breathed, coming to stand behind him. "That went well.'

"Whatever," Blaine said. "He's got his head shoved so far up his ass I wouldn't have gotten anything in there anyway."

Quinn knew better than to be shocked, but she looked unimpressed all the same. "Wow," she drawled. "And you wonder why he didn't want to date you. I'm stunned."

"For the last time, I wasn't asking him out on any goddamn _date_—"

Just over a week later, in sweats and nothing else, Blaine gave up channel surfing and lurched off the couch to pick a movie instead. It was the first time he'd moved since nine that morning, when he traversed from bed to couch to achieve some small accomplishment before digging through the couch cushions for the remote.

It had been… a long week.

It felt like he'd left a project unfinished, and for all his recklessness and spontaneity Blaine didn't half-ass _anything_. What made it that much worse was knowing there really wasn't much started anyway, but still, the open-endedness of it bothered him.

He shouldn't have blurted out that shit about tattooing Kurt, Blaine thought, flicking through his DVD collection. Not for Kurt's sake, but his own. His waking moments, when the gun hovered in his hand before it touched skin, he saw a back before him that was covered in white, like untouched snow. A full, endless expanse, a blank sheet, and it was Blaine's job to ink between the lines. To sew into his skin the things Kurt never wanted bared to the world.

Blaine _wanted_. He had a million ideas at once time, one or two another, no fixated idea. But he knew once he has the man before him, in his chair and his parlor, he'd just know.

Blaine hadn't realized he'd been flipping a DVD case in his hand until it tumbled from his absent-minded grab. Startled, he reached down and plucked it from the ground, giving it an appraising look before flipping the case open. Why not?

He was halfway through the third scene when there was a loud knock on the door. Quickly pausing the film, he waited. Most of his acquaintances would have been shouting threw the paper thin door now, but there was silence now from the other side. Until the pounding started again, louder this time.

Sighing, and entirely disregarding his semi-dressed state, Blaine pulled himself reluctantly from the sofa he hadn't been planning on leaving for the rest of the day.

"Fucking hold on," Blaine grumbled as a third round of violent knocking started. "Jesus Christ…"

Blaine pulled the door open, angry words just beginning to form, when his lips went numb. A split second later, his cheek went numb too, as Kurt slowly lowered his trembling hand, having smacked Blaine clear across the face.


	3. Chapter 3

To say Kurt looked angry… well, he did, certainly, but not in the way Blaine would have expected. He looked stunningly lethal, face bleached bone white and eyes two narrow slits of deadly blue-grey, and right now the unfortunate target of that gaze felt every part of himself stand to attention at that. Wanted to feel just how much restraint was in those muscles, to feel the trembles, taste just how fucking _pissed off _he clearly was and-

It took Blaine a moment to realize he'd been hit, and he could only blame that brief moment on his suddenly uncontrollable libido. But when he did, when the red hot pain flared up along his cheek, he did a second thing he wasn't accustomed to doing. Blaine didn't strike back.

Not to say, of course, that he did nothing at all.

He wrenched Kurt through the door and slammed it shut, the rage on Kurt's face faltering, and he looked nothing but shocked when Blaine slammed him into the wall with a satisfying _thunk_. Blaine pressed tightly up against him, every nuance of his body language intended to threaten. Through the layers of clothes, Blaine felt Kurt's body tremble. Whether from anger or sudden fear, he wasn't sure.

"Who the fuck," Blaine finally hissed, drawing still closer, "do you think you are, to come up to my fucking doorstep and hit me?" Kurt gaped soundlessly, stunned into silence. "Because if you think that I'm some sort of goddamn gentleman, if you think I won't hit a man who struck first back twice as hard, you're wrong. Who the _fuck _do you think you are, Kurt?"

Every line of their bodies was pressed together, and Blaine realized belatedly that there might be another reason for Kurt's quiet as the man's face steadily blush a dark pink. Blaine blinked, and then rolled his eyes.

"Probably the only thing that saved you from a black eye," he grumbled, feeling the hot, swollen part of him pound incessantly at his consciousness, a part Kurt was now undoubtedly aware of, "was how fucking hot you are when you're pissed."

He backed off of Kurt, who blinked rapidly at him, breathing heavily. Sighing, Blaine rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his palm. "So are you going to tell me what's got your ovaries all in a twist over? Since this is apparently a _rom com_ now."

Kurt didn't say anything for a long moment, breathing hard and looking over-dramatically distraught. It was nearly endearing.

Wordlessly Kurt then whipped out his phone, pulled something or another up on the screen, and shoved it towards Blaine.

Glowering still, but interest piqued, Blaine took the phone off him. Kurt's hand recoiled quickly, as if affronted by the idea of making contact, and Blaine rolled his eyes pointedly at him before looking at Kurt's phone. A text conversation had been brought up. The recipient was a cell with a New York area code, and looking vaguely familiar. The very last text sent as Blaine's address, and a proposition that was almost tame compared to its predecessors. _Want me to shut up? Come here and make me._

_ Can your legs spread as wide as I think they can? It's cool if not, on your knees if just as good._

_ I looked, and I'm pretty sure you couldn't even fit a thong under those poor excuses for jeans you were wearing. But it'd be awesome if you'd prove me wrong._

And earlier was… oh wow, Blaine thought dazedly, pointedly ignoring Kurt's increasingly violent replies to those messages.

_I'm sure I can get it out of you, baby. Can get it in you too. If you can take it. _

And they were all quite tame in comparison to, oh god Blaine wasn't sure his tongue was long enough to reach that far…

_Ever been rimmed by a guy with a tongue piercing? Because I can get this thing all the way—_

Blaine stopped, his eyes darting to the phone number listed at the top, sudden realization like a slap to the face. He pulled his own phone out of the pocket of his sweats, and Kurt suddenly snatched his own back, already hissing, "I hope that you know my roommate's friend is studying law at NYU and we've already corresponded. I'm fully prepared to press charges for assault, violation of privacy, stalking—"

It was Blaine's turn to push his phone at Kurt. Although he didn't take it for a moment, Kurt did shut up long enough to look. Blaine has pulled up Santana's contact information, and listen under her cell was—

Kurt's eyes darted from the phone in Blaine's hand, back and forth. His face first went white, and then slowly pink, until even his ears were burning red.

Kurt licked his lower lip, refused to meet Blaine's eye.

"So, your lawyer friend," Blaine said coolly, taking back his cell phone and pocketing it. "What would he have to say about people showing at private residencies to commit unprovoked aggravated assault?"

Kurt answered with another question. "Did you put her up to this?"

Blaine tossed his hands in the air. "Are you fucking _joking _with me?"

"_Did _you?"

"No, you asshole, I didn't. You know what." Blaine rubbed at his eyes, the adrenaline wilting along with another part of him. "I don't have to deal with this shit. Get the fuck out of my apartment."

When Kurt didn't move, Blaine looked up, gestured angrily to the door, and snapped, "What are you waiting for, me to press charges too? Get _out_."

"I'msorry."

It was said so quickly that it took a moment to process. Blaine's scowl dropped, and Kurt's face got darker.

Rolling his eyes hard and shifting his weight to and fro, like a boxer waiting for the next strike, Blaine snapped, "Fucking whatever," because receiving apologies wasn't something he was accustomed to. It was usually him that owed them.

But Kurt wasn't done. "I shouldn't have hit you," he said stiffly, maturely, like some sort of goddamn gentleman. "I apologize. That shouldn't have happened," he repeated. "It's… been a long week."

It was a week half-hoping for Kurt to walk back through that door, it was a sexual itch he just couldn't scratch, it was his chair so ready for that body but constantly being filled with the wrong people. Blaine could relate. "It really has been."

Kurt seemed to have nothing else to say. His eyes darted to the door, and Blaine realized that there was a golden opportunity right in front of him. Kurt was here, and apparently with enough time to spare to go around New York City assaulting people on false accusations. Perhaps he might be able to stay a little longer.

"You're not going to sashay over to Santana's to slap her too, are you?"

"No, I don't think so. She'd actually manage a decent hit."

"Hey..."

"How did she get my number?" Kurt interrupted, looking back to his phone and wincing at what he saw. Blaine smirked. Even for a city boy, some of those texts were downright obscene.

"From Rachel, probably," Blaine replied. "I heard Santana she's been texting your friend."

Oh, and the anger was back. Ah, and so was something else. There was just something about that face contorted just so, the flush of color it brought to his face, the spark it lit in his eyes. But Blaine knew fairly well that there were other types of moods that could illicit the same sort of physical response. He opened his mouth to egg it on a little bit.

_'The hills are alive… with the sound of music…"_

Blaine started, and both of their attentions snap back towards the living room where the DVD player had apparently been set on pause for too long, causing the movie to start back up.

"Is that…" Kurt squinted, craning to the side to look around Blaine at the screen. "Is that _Moulin Rouge_?"

It was Blaine's turn to blush now. He crossed his arms angrily, biting at his tongue piercing in annoyance. "So?"

"You're watching _Moulin Rouge_."

"So?" Blaine repeated empathetically. "You've got a problem with musicals? That's rich from someone like you. I don't think I've ever seen anyone so dramatic outside of…"

Kurt cuts him off with a defensive, "I love _Moulin Rouge,_" as if Blaine was insulting _him _now, and it occurred to Blaine how very ridiculous it all was, how they were continuously backpedaling into each other and how that wasn't getting Kurt anywhere closer to either the door or his bed.

Blaine ran his hand through his hair again, and for the first time realized just how very undressed he was. His hair, more than likely, looked like a weave that had been run through a garbage disposal.

It seemed that Kurt had simultaneously realized Blaine's unkempt and rather naked state. Again, Blaine found himself wondering how Kurt saw him. Obviously Kurt had seen his neck tattoos, the perfectly proportioned bow tie that had hurt like such a bitch to get over his collarbone. But then were the others.

Along his left arm were thick hibiscus flowers done in haunting lilacs, busheled beneath leaves carved from cold iron. Trailing up the inside of his forearm was a broken black feather, the top corner of it disintegrating into tiny little blackbirds that flew in a great cloud up his arm, tiny little bodies intermingling among an assortment of other tattoos inked over the years before disappearing over his shoulder.

His right arm had a long violin bow, starting at his wrist and terminating up near his arm pit. On the back of his forearm was something experimental, the only tattoo he'd ever gotten from Santana, and the only one Blaine had ever drawn. Scrawled down was the word MUSIC in a cryptic, gothic font that, when viewed from the other side, scrawled into DEATH. The two opposing sides of the coin. It was a spellbinding twist of lines and illusions and the finished product still causes Santana to preen whenever she caught sight of it.

Across his right breast was a perfect blackbird, perched upon the hand of a clock. It was stamped over in ghostly hues of blue, greens and yellow, the eyes a startling shade of violet. A smaller bird was in flight behind it, taking flight behind its steadfast partner. Roman numerals settled beneath it, a countdown that trailed his ribcage, an eclectic collage of confusion and calm, flight and fight.

Kurt's eyes finally snapped up, and Blaine smirked slightly at having caught him staring. Now that it was hard. Kurt's lips were parted slightly, his mouth such a pretty pale pink.

"So, um, it isn't that far in. The movie," Blaine added at Kurt's slightly confused look. "I'm at, like, the green fairy part. I could rewind it."

"Oh, is this on VHS?" Wonderful, Kurt had regained his wits. Blaine missed the drooling.

"_Fuck _you, do you wanna hang around and watch it or not?"

Kurt was quiet for so long that Blaine took it as a passive-aggressive way of saying 'no', of course I'm not staying, and for Kurt to then walk right out. Probably for good this time. So it came as a great surprise when Kurt shed his coat, shoved it at Blaine who caught it just in time, and then strutted right past him and into the small living room.

"Make yourself at home," Blaine grumbled, hanging Kurt's coat on the doorknob. If Kurt wasn't going to act like a guest, he didn't see why he should act like a host. He collapsed back on the couch, allowing Kurt to fiddle with the DVD player, and then let himself into the tiny kitchen to find himself a drink. As the opening previews rolled to a close, Kurt returned with a bottle of water and yet another frown on his face. "Your fridge is full of beer."

"I see you didn't help yourself to that, too."

"_Only _beer."

"I swear to God, Hummel, shut up or I'm seriously kicking your ass out."

Muttering under his breath that Blaine was the one who'd invited him to stay, Kurt made his way back towards the couch. He hesitated for a moment, eyeing Blaine's bare torso. Blaine arched an eyebrow at that, but Kurt didn't comment on his state of undress as expected. He settled next to Blaine on the two-seater couch, a good foot of distance between them. He kept his eyes determinedly on the screen as the melancholy notes to the opening began.

"Got a problem?" Blaine wheedled.

"You barely have more than alcohol in your fridge," Kurt reiterated, twisting the lid from his water bottle and taking a delicate sip. "I'm not the one with the problem here."

Blaine grinned hard, stretching a bit in his seat. His guest very pointedly did not look over. He wandered, as the movie began, if Kurt was the type to cry during these things.

Luckily, Kurt wasn't the type to talk through a movie, which Blaine absolutely detested. That wasn't to say Blaine didn't slip in a few jabs. Once they got to the _At The Moulin Rouge_ number, Blaine had said to Kurt, grinning cheekily, "_Voulez vous couche avec moi?" _Kurt had returned the proposition with an unimpressed look, and rattled off an answer in such rapid French that it made Blaine's head spin. He was sure that whatever Kurt had said, it wasn't complimentary. But his mind had already supplied him with a translation, although Blaine highly doubted they taught students words like those in college level French.

Blaine noticed something else about Kurt for the first time, besides his abilities to insult Blaine fluently in more than one language. His ears were… pointy. Ears weren't generally something he'd pay close attention to, but there they were. His nose had a cute up tilt to it. Initially Blaine had thought it snobbish, but it fit in so well with the rest of his face. There were almost feminine angles to his face, but something about the sturdy set of his cheekbones, of his eyebrows, was undeniably masculine.

There was a point in the movie when Blaine shifted forward a bit and Kurt caught a peek of his bare back. He'd sneered, made a comment about how of course Blaine would have _wings_, and Blaine retaliated by snagging the remote off of him. He'd paused the movie and threatened to turn it off and physically remove Kurt from his apartment if he wouldn't shut up. In a move of daring, Kurt lunged over Blaine's lap to make a grab for the remote, and it was only the shock of having Kurt's ass barely half a foot from his face that granted Kurt the victory. And he was a horrible winner, smirking like the imp he was and tucking it safely under the aforementioned ass.

Blaine heartily disagreed about the presumption that this would in any way stop him.

But Blaine let him win this one, simply because Kurt didn't move away after that. He waited for Kurt to return to his end of the couch, but he never did. Blaine could feel the warm of him through his clothes, and despite being shirtless, the room was beginning to feel oddly warm. When _Come What May _began, Blaine's prediction came true. A few furtive glances saw Kurt's eyes get glassy and pink, and he was blinking rather hard. After fiddling his tongue ring behind his teeth for a few moments of long deliberation Blaine finally shifted, and in the most clichéd moved he'd ever conceived of doing, pressed his arm around the back of Kurt's shoulders.

Kurt didn't look at him. Nor did he move away, or give any indication he felt Blaine's little half hug. He just continued blinking hard against the tears, and sunk a little lower in the couch, and leaned slightly into Blaine's chest.

They stayed that way for the rest of the film.

When the movie had finished, and Blaine had lost the argument to just order in Chinese for lunch in favor of Kurt fixing them something, it was nearing two o' clock. Blaine was lounging on the couch, watching Kurt once again make himself at home in the kitchen. He was going through the cabinets and fridge, bemoaning the state of it. They hadn't really gotten beyond small talk since the movie concluded. Nothing Blaine wanted to talk about, anyway. He still hadn't put on a shirt, and Kurt's eyes constantly darted to his torso, his arms, his bare neck. Blaine thought about what Kurt thought of his tattoos and also, not for the first time, what Kurt's problem with them was in the first place. Whatever it was, it didn't seem to be an issue for him now.

Watching Kurt burrow through the cabinets, Blaine had another epiphany. Kurt had shed his vest when he'd taken a trip to the bathroom, and Blaine could see how neatly his shirt was tucked into his pants. Kurt was all long, lean lines. He wore a high collar, but nothing that couldn't be nudged aside a bit. This was probably the least amount of layers Blaine had ever seen him in, and his thoughts careened to slightly more dangerous territory.

Perhaps Blaine's plan has worked out, in unexpected ways. Kurt was showing no signs of going anywhere anytime soon. And somehow, someway, he'd ended up here, without the assistance of either alcohol or _coffee_.

Somehow, without his putting in much actual effort, Blaine's plan had worked out in a very convenient way. This time, there was no possible way Blaine had read the signs wrong. Kurt had certainly made himself comfortable, shedding layers and shedding armor in Blaine's own living room. Had cracking a few teasing grins. Fuck, had practically crawled into Blaine's _lap_. And then _stayed there_.

If that wasn't a clear indicator, Blaine didn't know what was.

Blaine made himself quiet as he stepped behind Kurt, who was still bemoaning the state of Blaine's cupboards under his breath. "Find anything yet?"

Kurt jumped, and then started again upon seeing how close Blaine was standing. "What?"

"To cook," Blaine clarified. His kitchen was tiny, but blockaded by the hooked counter, leaving only a few feet worth of entryway behind Blaine. He took a deliberate step forward, shoving his hands in the pockets of his sweats. His fingers found a little foil package. While he certainly wasn't planning on taking Kurt right there in the kitchen, the coincidence tickled his sense of humor.

Kurt eyed him, his intelligent eyes oddly blank for a moment before saying, "Well I should have expected it from the state of your fridge, but there's hardly anything of substance in here to do anything with. What on earth do you survive off of?"

"Take out," Blaine answered shortly, amused as Kurt rambled on a bit.

"That figures. That's disgusting, you know, not to mention phenomenally expensive, I'm sure. You have Rice-a-Roni and Cup Ramen, Blaine, are you paying ode to your old undergraduate days?"

"Never went to college," Blaine said nonchalantly, not moving closer but standing firm in place, eyebrow cocked in interest. So Kurt rambled when he was nervous. How endearing.

"Of course not, I suppose you hardly need to prove you have any brains to do what _you _do."

They were moving back into dangerous territory, where Blaine got more angry than horny and nothing productive for his sex life would come of that. Kurt had turned his back on Blaine to search back through the cabinets. It was a mistake Blaine was just awful enough to take advantage of.

In two strides, he cornered Kurt into the bend of the countertop. Kurt's hands froze where they were on the cabinet doors. Blaine pressed gently, but with intent, against his back and hips. Every part of cool, icy Kurt was warm. Who would have known? Blaine used one arm to cage Kurt in. With his free hand, he drew a long line up Kurt's tense arm, up and to his shoulder. He cupped the warm junction of shoulder and neck, and inched his face closer until his nose was pressed to Kurt's hairline. He smelled like cologne, hairspray, and something like ginger.

"You never did tell me why you hate tattoos so much," Blaine whispered, making sure every word gusted warm breath over Kurt's neck. Kurt's bodied trembled a bit, then, and he grinned slightly in triumph, pushing closer. And oh, his ass was _right there_, Blaine was pressing in, he could feel it…

Ducking his head a little lower so as to brush his lips against the skin as he spoke, Blaine murmured, "I don't think you'd look half bad with a tattoo. I meant what I said before." Kurt wasn't responding, and Blaine pressed closer still, using his hand to drag Kurt's collar down slightly. He stroked it with his thumb, then a few fingertips, scratching the skin ever so lightly with his nails. The skin was pale and smooth, like silk beneath his lips as Blaine whispered, "Just a small one. Something that you'd have to _work _to get at and see." The first kiss was more of a bite, a brush of lips before Blaine nipped lightly at the taught skin. Kurt jolted again, and his hands trembled where they remained fastened to the cabinet door.

"Just a small one," Blaine promised, "something only you would know was there." He kissed him, then, right below the hairline and Blaine inhaled sharply. There was ginger and honey, something warm and spicy and clean. Tentatively he darted a tongue out to taste, and Kurt definitely jumped then. Blaine repeated it, and then latched his lips along the wet skin to suck ever so lightly. He rocked them a bit, just a gentle push of their bodies side to side, and his hand returned to Kurt's shoulder. Down his quivering arm until he reached Kurt's side, and then he reached Kurt's side. It didn't take much to place his hand over Kurt's taught stomach and press gently but firmly, pulling Kurt's own body closer to his own.

His mouth seemed to have a mind of its own. Kurt was quiet as the back of his neck quickly became damp and hot from Blaine's attentions. Blaine pushed at him rhythmically, sucking in tandem with the rock of his body. He bit harder, and kept his teeth there as he sucked. Kurt was so silent, his body jumping and jolting slightly. Blaine's hand abandoned its spot on his stomach, trailed a little lower to his abdomen, down until he felt a belt buckle, leather saturated with warmth and so ready to be tugged free.

Kurt's hand slid from the cupboard, finally, and he straightened against Blaine's body. Blaine pressed his hand over the buckle, his fingers dipping lower to find the catch.

Kurt turned slowly in place then, remaining bracketed by Blaine's bare arms, his hand slipping loose from the belt. Blaine's mouth followed the line of neck as Kurt switched position, and he licked hard at his Adam's apple. His skin was clean, warm, and so absurdly soft. Softer than any man's neck should be. He tasted underneath Kurt's chin, bit gently at his jawline just to feel the muscles jump, lips dragging like a promise up and up, he opened his eyes…

And stopped.

Kurt was looking at Blaine with an expression he'd never seen before, and it was so carefully stoic he might not have been thinking anything at all. Pressed so tightly together, Blaine could feel Kurt's complete lack of interest, and became very aware of just how much his own interest was showing. It felt like fire, like burning and insatiable tension, and Blaine's body pressed closer even as those seldom used alarm bells in his head started to go off.

There was a pregnant pause in which neither of them did anything. And then, as if inquiring after the time, Kurt asked, "What do you think you're doing?" But as Blaine opened his mouth to answer, although with what not even he knew, Kurt cut across him in a whisper. "No, don't answer that. I don't care."

Blaine still couldn't move away. His breathing picked up, and nothing in his body would cool down.

"One of these days," Kurt informed him calmly, "you're going to mess with someone worse than me, and you're finally going to get what you deserve for being such a selfish, heartless fuck up."

All of Blaine's interest was promptly killed off faster than if he were to be doused with ice water.

Kurt shoved him off violently, and Blaine's lower back struck against the counter. "If you'll excuse me, I have things I'd actually rather be doing right now," Kurt said in strangled tones. His face looked like some forced sort of calm as he bypassed even the short trip to pick up his vest on the couch, going straight for the door, picking up his coat that he'd left hang on the doorknob.

"Hey, okay, just wait," Blaine begged after his back, following Kurt through. "For fuck's sake, Kurt, that was stupid, I know I'm a dick, just say 'no' but don't go storming off like some sort of drama queen!" Kurt beat Blaine to the entryway. Not even bothering to put on his coat, Kurt pushed through the door, attempting to close it tightly behind himself but Blaine caught his wrist in time. "_Hey_-"

The door swung open, and Kurt swung around, and the look on his face caused Blaine to drop his wrist immediately. Expecting what quite frankly would be righteous anger, Blaine saw fear. And something he wasn't quite used to seeing personally, although he recognized it all the same. Blaine didn't get close enough to people to hurt them, and seeing it reflect on someone's face left him so wrong-footed he felt hollow.

Wrenching his wrist from Blaine's slackened grip, Kurt once again left him hovering miserablebeneath the threshold. Either he'd missed spotting the elevator or he really didn't trust the ones in Blaine's apartment building, Kurt stormed through the double doors situated in in the opposite hall, his heels whipping out of sight. Blaine could hear them galloping down the stairs before the doors swung themselves shut, cutting off any noise.

Blaine stood there for several long moments, anger already drained from him. He hadn't even been mad. Defensive, most certainly. Uncomfortably guilty, definitely.

_…selfish, heartless fuck up._

And in so many ways, hurt. Like Kurt's words has stripped his skin like it was nothing more than paper, and then poured paint thinner over what he found there.

His lips felt raw and buzzing. The warm was more muggy now than it was warm. He shut the door with a quiet click.

On shaky legs Blaine stumbled over to the couch before collapsing down on it. But there was something hard beneath him. On instinct, he shifted himself up and tugged whatever had been left there.

Kurt's vest.

Blaine ran his fingers over the smooth silver material. Feeling quite ridiculous, but wondering if he might be able to catch a whiff of Kurt's cologne from it, he lifted it from the couch and found it strangely heavy. Frowning, Blaine spun it in his hands a bit to see the right side of it hanging heavily.

A quick search in the pockets discovered Kurt's cell phone.


	4. Chapter 4

Blaine hesitated before knocking on the door, and not for the first time considered his alternatives. A lobotomy sounded nice. Or castration. Or a convent…

Just a few hours ago, after some brooding on the couch, Blaine had finally decided to call Santana. She'd answered with, _"Make it quick, Blaine, I'm busy."_

Blaine had several things to say to that, none complimentary. He could hear several female voices in the background, and maybe a television.

"I'll make it _quick_, then," Blaine snapped. "Been up to anything fun lately?"

Santana was quiet for a moment. The voices in the background stopped talking. _"Oooh. I take it you had a visitor today_?" Someone, no one Blaine recognized, was starting to laugh in the background.

"What the fuck were you thinking?"

_ "So did he show up at your place or not?"_

"He punched me as soon as I opened the door!" Santana cackled, and Blaine had to shut his eyes hard for a moment. There was an ever-present pounding behind his eyes that had started when Kurt stormed out, and hadn't since abated. "Seriously, what the hell was the point of that?"

_ "It got him to your place, didn't it? I was doing you a _favor._"_

"Yeah, but not exactly in the way I was planning."

"_Well did you tell him it was me?"_

"What do you think, of course I did."

_"And was he still pissed at you?"_

Kurt was in all actuality probably much more pissed at Blaine right now than he had been when he'd hit him. "No," Blaine answered, truthful only in specific context.

_"Then what's the problem?"_ Santana asked, already bored. _"It was just a joke; if he's still pissed he can bitch at me about it."_

"The problem…" Blaine sighed, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his palms. "Look, whatever, just… Where did you get his phone number? Rachel?"

"_Why?"_

Blaine breathed slowly, in and out. "Because..." Suddenly, something registered. He could hear the girls chatter start to pick back up, and there was definitely one he didn't quite recognize. "Are you… what the fuck, is she there with you?"

_"So?"_

"Put her on the phone."

"_Why?"_

"Because you're a pshychotic _bitch _who almost got my nose broken! Give the phone to Rachel!"

_ "Oh, this I have got to hear more about later. Christ, when did you get so boring. Hold on a moment, buzzkill…"_

Blaine waited impatiently, twisting Kurt's phone in his hands. It has gone off with about two dozen texts by now, and he barely resisted the urge to check them. Barely.

_"Hello?"_

"Hey," Blaine said quickly, not in the mood to explain himself. He probably wouldn't ever be. "Kurt was over here just a bit ago and…"

_"Oooh! I didn't think he'd actually go looking for you."_

Blaine frowned. "You knew about the texts?"

_"Texts?" _Rachel repeated back blankly. "_Was he texting you?"_

"Huh?" Blaine frowned, and squeezed the phone in his hand tightly as it buzzed in his fist. "Whatever, he left his phone here. I wanted to maybe drop it off at his place."

_ "Oh. I'm surprised he didn't come back for it himself."_

Blaine wasn't, given the situation. "Yeah, well I thought I'd drop it off for him. Do you know where he lives?"

_"That's so sweet of you!"_ Rachel gushed. _"I'll text you the address, it's at a loft in Bushwick."_

Of course it was.

And that was where Blaine stood now, looking at a large sliding metal door. Kurt's place was situated in a renovated warehouse that even Blaine had to grudgingly admire for the bohemian aspect of it. He glanced at his phone, at the address Rachel had texted him. Below it she'd written, _Be nice, he's having a bad week. _Was that supposed to mean something to him? _Be nice? _Like fuck.

He could smell cooking food, something spicy. Blaine wandered if that was the sort of thing that would bother Kurt. It seemed like it would.

He rung the bell, listening to the noise resonate from within. There was silence for a few long moments in which Blaine dearly hoped no one would answer so he could justify dropping the phone and leaving, before the door slid open with no warning. Kurt stood there in very different clothes than he'd worn earlier in the day. He was barefooted in loose, holey jeans, and a large flannel shirt. Lounging clothes. But they only made him look softer, even though the hard, calculating expression on his face contradicted that.

"…hey," Blaine said, once he finally managed to unglue the tongue from his mouth. Despite the very blatant rejection earlier, Kurt was obscenely attractive, and Blaine couldn't change his reactions any more than he could change Kurt's.

Kurt didn't return the greeting, just held out a hand. When Blaine stared blankly in return, Kurt said monotonously, "Rachel Facebook messaged me. Give me my phone."

Precious. "Yeah, in a minute. I wanted to—"

"Like I care what you want, give me my phone and go shadow someone else's doorstep."

God, what century was this kid _from_. "Just chill a second. You left before I could," but Blaine didn't know what to follow that up with. Kurt was staring hard at him, waiting, but Blaine mouthed silently a bit, half words caught in his throat. There was something about being pinned under such scrutiny, at having every fiber of Kurt's tightly constrained attention on him, and then having nothing to show for it.

"Right, well, if you can't even manage a half-decent apology I don't see what the point of all this is," Kurt snapped. He held his hand out a bit more incessantly, his unwavering attention suddenly seeming to close off. It was a strange thing to describe, but it was something about Kurt's eyes, the intensity abating like the tide, like a curtain closing, and in a blind panic he blurted it out.

"I'm _sorry_," Blaine growled, and it sounded more like an insult than any form of apology, but it at least stopped Kurt from reaching for the phone himself. "I'm just. I don't know, I'm _sorry _and I'm going to be honest I'm having a hard time understanding why but I am anyway, okay? Jesus, I just. I guess I do things differently, than you." Was there an eloquent way to say 'I just wanted you for a quick fuck'? Blaine didn't think there was. "Or what you might expect. I."

Kurt was staring at him with a bewildered look on his face, probably not expecting an entire little speech tacked on to what must have been the worst apology he'd ever received in his young life. But it was the first apology Blaine could remember having given in a very, very long time and he wanted to make it count.

"It's just how I do shit, I'm not any sort of gentleman, I don't really know what it is you'd… want, but I know I'm definitely not it and I don't care. I just thought you might _want _something, I know I do. You… I guess you know I want it, I do, and when I want stuff I'm not exactly shy about trying getting it."

"Clearly," Kurt was waspishly, finally interrupting like he was so prone on doing, and it brought the anger back some, pulled Blaine back into familiar territory.

"But why didn't you just stop me earlier, huh?" Blaine demanded, and now Kurt's resentful face softened a bit, as if in guilt. "Were you pausing for dramatic effect? To prove a point? Because I can't read minds, Kurt, and when someone doesn't move—"

"Lack of response doesn't imply _consent_ you insufferable—"

"And I just apologized, okay! But I would have backed off if you'd said something! I did back off! Fucking hell, Kurt, you don't get to be the uppity wounded party here. Don't just assume I'm some asshole douche who would—do that sort of thing. Jesus fucking Christ, I backed off, okay? And how the hell do you think it makes _me _feeling knowing some guy just assumes I'd…"

Blaine trailed off at the look on Kurt's face. It was scathing, or withdrawn, or masklike. It looked… cracked, somehow. Very tired. Like Kurt was so very at the end of his ropes he'd just decided to let go, close his eyes, and hope for the best. "I… Guess I was. Proving a point. I didn't think you would, I don't. I don't think you'd do that to someone." Kurt shrugged awkwardly. "You're a little. Rough. But not that type. I didn't mean to imply that you were." The words sounded painful in his throat, and Blaine suddenly didn't need to hear an apology. But Kurt gave it anyway. "I'm sorry."

Blaine, almost as unused to being apologized to as he was giving apologies, not to mention twice in one day, searched hard for some kind of response to that. But Kurt wasn't quite finished. "I don't want you to think I don't like you, Blaine. I don't, well you should know by now I don't respond well to advances like… what you're used to, apparently. But you're. I do like you. I like what you do and-"

"What I do?"

"Your work," Kurt slowly elaborated, blushing a bit. "God, not the other thing."

"I thought you hated tattoos."

"I do," Kurt asserted, but somehow not unkindly. "But they're a form of art, and as an artist I can hardly condemn any sort of medium through which a fellow artist chooses to express themselves." Too many words, Blaine felt dizzy with trying to figure out if he was being insulted or complimented. "And I have seen your work. Rachel showed me, and I looked you up and… I saw you, working, and you're very passionate about what you do." Kurt swallowed. "I can't hate that. Especially when you're so good at it, no matter my personal opinions on the whole… idea. I called you something today I really didn't mean. I'm sorry for that, too. You're not a fuck-up. You're… actually incredibly talented."

That was most definitely a compliment, although a double-edged one, and Blaine was mortified to feel his face slowly heat up. He cleared his throat, said, "Yeah, well… Um, here." He dug Kurt's phone out of his jacket pocket and handed it over. Kurt took it from him, glanced at the screen to perhaps check just how many texts he'd missed (_A lot, popular little fucker, _Blaine thought). But before Kurt had the chance to close the conversation and subsequently the door, Blaine rushed out, "I really am sorry. I can be a douche. I know that… how I like to do things doesn't really match up to the 'right way'. You, um." Blaine shrugged tightly. "Deserve better than that." Looking past the haze of lust, it was clear to see Kurt wasn't the hit-it-and-quit-it type. He was one of those silly romantic, the kind that _liked _being part of a 'we'. He'd make someone happy, that way, but would never be satisfied with what little Blaine himself had to offer. "I won't do that to you again."

Shockingly enough, Kurt smiled. A small one, but it was just noticeable. "I know," he said. "And I'm not blameless myself. I lose my temper, sometimes. A lot lately, actually."

"It's fine," Blaine signed, beyond done with the seemingly endless apologies. If this whole litany of emotional fallout happened after every "I'm sorry" then people could seriously keep their apologies to themselves. "I'll let you get back to whatever you're doing, I guess."

"Sure. And thanks for this," Kurt raised his phone and waggled it a bit.

"No problem. I'll see you around."

"Maybe." It was an odd response, but before Blaine could ask Kurt was sliding the door shut, and Blaine was left to rub the stupid little smile off his face all by himself.

When Blaine arrived at _Warbler's_ that Monday morning, Mike was already there, perched on the stoop with his perfect dancer's back held primly up in contrast to his rapidly moving fingers as he jabbed at his phone. He was either having a fight with his girlfriend or playing an app on his phone; the concentrated look on his face made it hard to tell.

When Blaine drew level with him and Mike merely nodded his greeting at him, Blaine glanced down; _Candy Crush_. Good. Blaine had reached his quota for drama two plus days ago.

Unlocking the gate while exchanging a rather subdued greeting, and then the door, Blaine tried to remember his schedule for the day and was drawing a blank. While Mike headed straight for his station, Blaine went to the desk for the heavy-duty binder Quinn kept their schedules in.

"You're free until nine," Mike called over to him as Blaine rapidly paged through sheaf of paper that he was sure Quinn ordered in a fashion geared towards confusing him. Blaine glanced up and met Mike's disarming smile. "You've got an Arthur coming in to get a leg piece."

Gnawing worriedly at his lip ring, Blaine nevertheless abandoned the folder. "Arthur, Arthur… I don't remember talking to him."

"You've been e-mailing him, I think."

"Yeah?"

"He probably called himself 'Artie'."

"You know him?" Blaine asked curiously, slightly disarmed. Mike was certainly not the shyest of his tattoo artist, but he nevertheless liked to keep to himself most of the time. For him to know anything about a new client was certainly something new.

"Yeah, Tina's friends with his girlfriend. He's, um… He's very white?"

"Was that a question?" Blaine asked, now pulling up his mail on his phone and scanning for his correspondence to whoever "Artie" was.

"No, just a warning. He's a good guy. His girlfriend is buying him a tattoo for his birthday. I don't really think he knows what he wants, he just wants something 'cool'." Catching the look on Blaine's face, Mike rushed on to add, "Seriously, he's a good guy. You'll like him."

Blaine was doubtful, but set about readying his station regardless, as well as unearthing his favorite sketchpad. Without meeting him Blaine could hardly brainstorm any possibilities for the design. Once he'd gotten a few needles out and wiped down a tattoo guns, he settled into his chair and started to free sketch a few things. Mostly he thought of a restrained, quick-witted art student, turn of the century personality awash in a giant melting pot of a city. Caged eyes and flaring temper, delicate features but with strength in his stride, and a cool, clean scent. Skin as soft as silk under his tongue. Blaine drew. Some fragments, some full ideas, some nonsense. But it seemed to help, to settle Kurt more firmly into his mind. Tapered waist that would look utterly delectable with a long bundle of flowers spread up his side, supple thighs with poetry written along the inside, porcelain skin stained with matted color…

Blaine slowly lost track of time. He heard Mike greet his first client, a middle-aged gentleman, and around eight 'o' clock heard Sam, Santana and Quinn enter the shop. Blaine said nothing to Santana, and she him thankfully. He was still too cross with her to keep himself in check in any semblance of calm conversation.

And then, there was a tentative, "Hello?" from somewhere in front of him, and Blaine looked up. He didn't have to look far. Arthur, or "Artie" as Mike had referred to him, could hardly ever be at eye level. He was situated in a wheelchair, and was wearing khaki slacks, a Godawful checked sweater vest, thick bifocals, neatly parted hair, and rising gloves. All in all, he was most likely one of the strangest people Blaine had ever seen enter his tattoo parlor.

Feeling more than a little awkward, Blaine decided to remain seated rather than to stand as he reached forward to shake his new client's hand. "You must be Artie. I'm Blaine."

"Nice to meet you," Artie said with a grin, shaking Blaine's hand with a much firmer grip than he'd been anticipating. Quinn gave Blaine a _Behave _look before walking back to her desk, and Blaine settled himself more comfortably into his chair as Artie put the lock onto his own.

"So what brings you in today, Artie," Blaine asked, settling himself into the preliminary routine he used for any first-time clients.

"I wanted to get something done on my leg."

"Any ideas?" Blaine asked, thinking that it was a much more acceptable question than, _Why your legs? _Blaine had a pretty good idea as to why.

"Something edgy," Artie said, pushing his glasses a little further up his nose. "Something people don't expect."

"You're a step ahead of the game, then. You're not the normal type to get a tattoo."

Artie grinned. "Exactly."

"Alright, before we get anything started, I have to ask. It is safe to tattoo your legs, right? Like, any allergies or… um, anything."

"It's fine," Artie said comfortably. "I can't feel them at all, but they're normal legs. I have therapy every day to keep the muscle and skin healthy, so it's fine."

Blaine had never tattooed a handicapped person, and it was perhaps this that gave Quinn cause to continuously glance over at the two.

"I heard your girlfriend's footing this for a gift. Happy birthday, I guess. When is it?"

"It's next week. But yeah, my girl's this best. Here." He dug out his phone and showed Blaine the background. It was of Artie in his wheelchair, but perched in his lap with her legs swung over the side was a pretty little blond, hair slicked back into a high ponytail, bring red lips and a grinning face.

"That's my girl, that's Kitty," Artie said proudly, taking his phone back and grinning down at the image. "She's really excited about it, said it'll show people how 'macho' I actually am."

Blaine smirked a bit. "Right. But no ideas on what you specifically want?"

"Not really. But word on the street is you're the kinda guy to go for when you don't know what you want. Kinda because, um, you don't listen to people even when they do. So I've heard on blogs."

"That's me, asshole genius at your service." Blaine signed. "Okay, well I can always work something out for you. But let's talk a bit first."

"Right, sure. Um, about what?"

"Tell me a bit about yourself," Blaine prodded, sitting himself and crossing one leg over another to balance his sketch pad. He flipped the page over on his latest creation—black silken ballet shoes, with heels of iron, feathers studded in the laces with blue hues that would match Kurt's eyes perfectly. He fiddled with a pencil absentmindedly, but truthfully, he already had the tattoo for Artie in his mind. But the style would depend a bit on his personality.

Artie, it transpired, was a film student at NYU.

"We've been getting a lot of students lately," Santana said, looking pointedly over at Blaine from where she sat next to her own client, a teenage girl biting so hard on her lip it was a small miracle she hadn't started bleeding.

"I thought college was supposed to make you broke," Blaine grumbled, shooting Santana a glare.

"My girl's pretty well off," Artie said, grinning at something or another. Blaine sketched a tiny notch on the page.

"Hobbies? Interests? Besides film, I mean."

"Er, well, I'm a bit of a nerd…" Blaine would have never guessed. "I like sci-fi and comics. Um, I used to be big into math and stuff in high school before I directed a drama club musical. It just clicked, you know? So I decided on film. I want to direct, but I'm pretty decent with the technicalities of producing too. "

"A mathematician at heart, huh," Blaine murmured, sketching out a few details.

"But the soul of an artist, baby," Artie claimed, raising a hand in such a Hail Mary way Blaine has to grin. He was starting to like this kid.

"Okay, Artie, I think I've got something. You have a budget I can work with? Quinn said around 3-K."

"Yeah, if you could."

Blaine nodded, moving himself onto a stool wheeling himself over. "So I've got a footrest, can I get your legs up on it?"

"Legs? Like, both? Um, yeah, sure, hold on…"

For a few clumsy moments they negotiated the mechanics of Artie's wheelchair until they'd retracted the footrests and Blaine was free to prop Artie's legs up on a stool. He removed Artie's loafers and rolled up his pant legs, raising an eyebrow when he found one completely shaven.

"I'd only thought I was getting a tattoo on the one," Artie said sheepishly. "Sorry."

Blaine was saved the uncomfortable question of how the hell Artie had managed that when he elaborated, "I asked Kitty to do it. I'm kinda a hairy guy. Believe me, it's not the weirdest thing I've asked her to do." Blaine was really, really starting to like him.

"Ooh, I like a man with a little hair," Santana purred, shimmying her shoulders a bit in Artie's direction. Her client let out a sign of relief, clearly glad for Santana's momentary distraction.

Artie hurriedly readjusted his glasses, face flushing. "Erm, I've got a girlfriend."

"Yeah? Me too."

Apparently unsure as to what to make of this, Artie hurriedly changed the subject to Blaine, who was pulling out a protractor kit. "What are those for?" he asked.

"I'm good, but even I can't draw a perfect circle," Blaine said, rifling through the tin and withdrawing circle stencils of varying designs. "So let's get your other leg taken care of and we can get started. I'm gonna be doing this in black and gray with a bit of blue, that'll keep the cost down a bit. And it fits better with the design anyway."

"Which is?"

Blaine just grinned at him. "Trust me, wheels, you're gonna love it."

Fifteen minutes later, and multiple measurements taken, Blaine was able to get started. As horrible as it sounded, Blaine was quite relieved for the moment that Artie had now feeling in his legs. He began at the ankle, one of the most painful places to ever get a tattoo. The skin felt very strange, soft but not necessarily healthy. They were white as snow, and skeletal thin. Blaine automatically fit the idea in his head into a thinner, longer model. For such a long limb, he has rather little area to work with. It also felt quite strange to be inking someone so very stationary, and someone who was quite talkative as well. At one point Blaine had to tell Artie very blatantly to shut up before he fucked the ink up. Artie did so without any indication he was affected by the harsh tones Blaine used to say it.

Two hours later, when Santana had finished the shoulder tattoo on her latest victim, she got up to fiddle with the iPod docked in the sound system. She switched stations, and Kanye West's booming tones came over the speakers. Artie shouted to her enthusiastically, "Yo, turn that shit up! Kanye's my boy!"

Blaine would have normally rolled his eyes in second-hand embarrassment, but strangely the song has some effect on him as he worked on Artie's legs. A boy, a man, who has thus far spoken of his disability like he was just describing a bad haircut. It'll grow back. He can make it work. Artie, it seemed, could make anything work.

_"That that don't kill me, can only make me stronger—"_

Blaine inked away, humming gently under his breath, harder better faster stronger…

Another three hours later a petit little blond thing came meandering into the shop, just as Blaine was finishing up. "Hey, Wheels McGee."

"Yo, baby," Artie called back, looking over at her and grinning. She had a cold look on her face that softened a tad when she met Artie's gaze. She had Starbucks in her hand, and Blaine knew immediately she wasn't someone he'd get along with readily.

"So you're Blaine," she says as she reaches them, leaning down to kiss Artie's temple while Blaine fiddles with some antibacterial wipes.

"Hey," Blaine replies, not really looking at her as he wipes down Artie's left leg with the cloth. "You came at the right time."

Kitty is staring down at Artie's legs, mouth partly agape, and her boyfriend asks worriedly, "What, does it look alright? He wouldn't let me look until it was finished, how does it look?"

"See for yourself, 'Wheels'," Blaine says, peeling off his gloves. "It's done."

"Really?" Bright excitement lightens Artie's fast, a grin crossing across his mouth as he unlocked his chair. Kitty stepped back to let Artie wheel himself towards the window, still staring quietly.

Blaine finally made eye contact with her. She stares at him for a moment in an appraising sort of way, and says, "Well, we didn't pick the wrong guy."

Snorting, Blaine finally stood up, groaning as he cracked his back, joints stiff from staying locked in position for so long. He walked to where Artie had stopped in front of the tri-fold full length mirrors, feet dragged lightly on the ground. Artie has used his hands to pull them onto their stands so he could see the full length of his calves.

The focal point of the tattoo technically began at the ankle, although the tattoo truly spanned the entire length of both his lower legs, from the pads of his feet to his knees. They were essentially blueprints of mechanical wings, complete with pale blue graph lines and notated metric measurements written along the design detailing the actual length and width of some of the pieces, measured exactly by Blaine's tape measurer. The notes were different on each leg rather than identical to create a more aesthetically unique element. The wings, which whipped up along his leg and to his knee, were industrial in design. There were no feathers, but a fan blades, sheathes of aerodynamic steel flickering out as if ready to take their user to the sky.

Schematics of wings for the dreamer in the chair. Harder, better, faster, stronger.

Kitty walked to his side and squeezed his shoulders in a hug, and whispered something into his ear. Artie was awed into silence, trailing his fingers gently over one metallic tipped wing.

Blaine smiled. It was the silent responses that made something warm in the pit of his stomach glow; made his bones themselves feel somehow lighter, as if they were as hollow as a bird's.

It wasn't even twenty minutes later, and Blaine smelled the coffee before he saw it. He was alone one moment, cleaning up his station after Kitty had paid up front while Artie wrung Blaine's hand in thanks, and the next an increasingly familiar hand was sliding a cup of coffee into his peripheral vision.

Looking over his shoulder and expecting one of Kurt's trademark passive, thoughtful looks, Blaine was surprised to see a vague smile dancing across his lips. "Hey."

"…hey." Kurt was still holding his own coffee, so Blaine felt it safe to assume that this one was for him. Not sure what to follow that up with, Blaine picked it up and took a sip and tasted cream and sugar. Real sugar, thank god. And no obvious hints of arsenic.

"I assumed how you took your coffee."

"This is fine," Blaine said, a little too quickly. He took another sip to buy himself a moment, and took in Kurt's look for the day. He was dressed more casually than Blaine had ever seen him, at least in public; pegged jeans, slouchy sweater with an asymmetrical neckline cut deep enough Blaine could see well past his clavicle, and white Converses.

And then Kurt took a seat in his parlor chair, and Blaine nearly choked on his coffee as around five of his fantasies was reaffirmed for him right before his eyes.

"I'm here for a tattoo," Kurt said.

"_What_?" Blaine managed to sputter. "You're serious?"

"No," Kurt grinned, laughing at the crestfallen look on Blaine's face. "My school is nearby, so I thought I'd stop by. With coffee."

Blaine tilted his cup in silent thanks, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand, causing Kurt to wrinkle his nose in distaste.

"I saw that man and woman who just left," Kurt said after a moment, settling himself back into the chair like it was his. Somehow, Blaine didn't mind. "Who was it that got a tattoo?"

"Oh, Artie? Yeah, the guy in the wheelchair. He just finished it up."

"What was it you gave him?"

Surprised, but slightly flattered at Kurt's seemingly genuine curiosity, Blaine picked his Nikon from the table and flicked through the memory. He pulled up a photo of Artie's left leg, the right clearly reflected in the mirror, and passed it over to Kurt.

Blaine drank some more of his coffee while Kurt went through the photos. He was quiet for quite some time before he asked, voice oddly muted, "Was it his idea or yours?"

"Mine," Blaine replied. "His girlfriend paid for it as a birthday gift. I think he just wanted to be 'cool', but… yeah." Blaine shrugged. "It fit him."

"You designed this?"

"Mhmm." Blaine was getting a bit distracted. Kurt had his legs crossed, and Blaine could just make out the line of his—

"Just… on the spot? And he let you?"

"Are you blind?" Blaine asked, insulted. "That's a work of fucking art, which I thought preppy little art students might actually _appreciate_."

Kurt railroaded through that like he hadn't understood the blatant insult. "What made you choose it?" He wasn't looking at Blaine, but at the camera, at some image Blaine had captured.

"You mean 'design'."

"Whatever, design then. Just," Kurt waved a regal hand in the air in a bored fashion as if he was only asking out of politeness sake, but the spark in his eyes as he stared at the camera bellied his interests. "Explain the thought process."

"You said you saw him. You say anything to him?"

"No."

"Then it wouldn't be any use trying to explain it to you," Blaine sighed, rubbing at his jaw and feeling the stubble prick his palm. "You'd have to know him. That tattoo was him. It was…" He didn't say anything more on it. It would be futile to explain it to someone who detested what he did like Kurt did. The act of peeling back flesh, finding what was underneath, and drawing it to the surface. To make a person vulnerable and transparent, and in a way, just a bit more mysterious to the eye.

"You know, you never did tell me why you hate what I do so much," Blaine pointed out.

"I told you, I don't hate what you do," Kurt said sternly, as he finally turned the camera off and set it aside.

"Well you hate something about it. What?"

Kurt didn't answer, drank his coffee and acted like Blaine hadn't asked.

Blaine rolled his eyes. "Look, thanks for the coffee and all, but if you only came here to give me the silent treatment—"

"I actually came here to ask you… I mean, if you still wanted," Kurt swallowed some more of his coffee, shifting about adorably, uncrossing his legs and causing Blaine to forget he was supposed to be getting pissed. He suddenly seemed to draw himself up a bit, and he met Blaine squarely in the eye as he asked, "Would you like to grab some drinks with me sometime this week?"

And that was that.

Having Kurt Hummel as a friend was very strange. It took a while for Kurt to unpick himself around Blaine, to stop being constantly on the defense. And if he were to be honest with himself, Blaine had to remind himself much of the same quite often in the beginning. But eventually, the little genuine quirks started to shine through, things Blaine loved to pick up in people, to translate into art.

Kurt kept odd hours, for one. On that day they'd traded phone numbers, and it turned out that Kurt was much more of a texter than a caller. Over the period of the next couple weeks, Blaine lost count to the number of times he'd been waken up at two, three in the morning to the odd text from Kurt (_Forbidden fruit creates many a jam, Blaine, _to which Blaine had replied, _Lecture me on child pornography at a saner hour and go the fuck to sleep). _Or else he'd send a series of texts containing song lyrics. He'd done Coldplay one night, and Blaine had woken up with a piano playing in his head (_When you feel tired but you can't sleep; Stuck in reverse) _and told him snappily at Kurt later that day that he'd need more super glue than New York could provide for that fix, making Kurt laugh. Often he'd send pictures of the view outside of his window, which Blaine couldn't help but admire, but never of himself disappointingly enough. Or else he'd take pictures of the way light shadowed the wall, as if filtered through water.

Kurt has a curious, inventive little mind. That first night they'd gone for drinks had ended up with the two coupled side-by-side in a little corner of the bar, making stories up about their fellow patrons as the barflies just barely clung to their chairs, ("Sorority girl number two," "Tourist pretending they like this sort of thing," "Yes people notice he's gay, except maybe that chick he's with," "That would be sorority girl number three.") Kurt had made their departure very clear just outside the bar, smiling just slightly as he slunk off into the night at two in the morning. Blaine, more than a little buzzed, didn't feel the need to insist he walk Kurt back. And somehow, walking back alone to his apartment left him feeling more accomplished than if he had company.

Blaine dragged Kurt over for a Star Wars marathon that weekend when Kurt let it slip he was a fan. Kurt didn't cozy up to him that time, but he reclined heavily back, relaxed and pliant and comfortable. Blaine tried not to stare too much. He failed, but he made a decent attempt.

Kurt took Blaine on a tour of the campus one day, which he thoroughly enjoyed. It was a dusty, Victorian-esque place. Dark, shadowed, with filthy light in every ample corner. It smelled like sweat, work, and when Blaine left him after lunch for a midday appointment his hands buzzed so hard for the tattoo gun he could hardly contain himself.

Kurt didn't visit Blaine at the tattoo parlor again, which bothered Blaine less than he thought it would. But Kurt seldom inquired after his work. In fact, after asking about Artie's tattoo, he never asked again. This irked something in Blaine at an unpleasant level for one very obvious reason.

For the first time, Blaine was taking initiative. He was never the one to go to people; the people came to him. They came for his unique gift with ink, they huddled for his exclusive company, they wanted him _there. _Blaine was used to being needed, but never to need. It figured that the one person he'd actually try for was showing little sign of wanting to try back.

Kurt was a musical theater major, and a lot of their conversation focused on Kurt. His classes, the lame ass Glee club he'd joined there, his rivals, his auditions. But Kurt showed little sign of inquiring about Blaine's own work life. At first, Blaine had assumed it was Kurt's way of granting him privacy, but now it was beginning to feel more than a little insulting.

Kurt had his own way of making up for that, though. He _listened _in a way Blaine had never seen a person do. His eyes focused entirely on Blaine when he spoke, never so much as twitching away or glazing over. He sat with absolute attention, all grace and poise and strength in his chair. Like he felt he was always being watched, so he wanted to show he was paying just as much attention.

Blaine certainly paid attention.

Although he made no more physical advances, it didn't stop his thoughts from straying in the middle of the night. When he woke up hard and aching in the morning, or in the shower in the afternoons, and thought not of those physical assets, although they were ample enough. He thought of smirking, quirked lips, or the way he laughed. Imagined how that laugh would change when in bed, how it would choke off into a groan as Blaine settled into him like he fully intended to stay there and never leave. He thought of Kurt's long, lovely arms holding his shoulders in, warm and safe. Imagined burying his face into the hollow of Kurt's breastbone and licking his name there.

Blaine hadn't slept with another since meeting Kurt. He didn't feel the need to. The fantasies left him sated enough to take the perpetual edge off.

There were other fantasies, of course, that Blaine couldn't quite shake. When he'd gotten to nearly two months of knowing Kurt, Blaine had run through literally dozens of tattoo possibilities for him with just as many placements. But none quite fit. And none would fit until he saw the skin in front of his eyes, the canvas for his ink. It would be perfect. Anything on that body would be perfect.

But although Kurt didn't often express his distaste for tattoos from that day onwards, he certainly didn't display any interest in them. They spent lazy afternoons at one another's apartments, legs draped over each other, going through and criticizing each other's extensive music library but singing along anyway. Met for coffee and for dinner, for late night walks when Kurt was bored and begged for company. To karaoke bars and, to Blaine's vague dislike, clothing stores where Kurt insisted he get semi-presentable clothes with no holes in them.

Every now and then, Blaine would catch Kurt staring at his ink. The bowtie, the violin bow, the little red cross on the side of his face, the tiny blackbirds. But he'd look away so fast Blaine wasn't positive he didn't imagine it.

But for now, that was that. And it was enough.

Blaine didn't realize it until nearly two months after Kurt first tailed Rachel into his shop. He was taking a short break after his second morning appointment, sneaking a quick cigarette in and calling Kurt. Blaine had wanted to drag Kurt to see _Pacific Rim _with him over the weekend, but Kurt already had their plans mapped out for the weekend.

_ "…and I told Adam we could double-date with him and Elliot, he didn't tell me where yet but probably Callbacks, so I sort of need Sunday night to rehearse…"_

"Wait." Blaine suddenly snapped to attention, cigarette nearly slipping from his fingers. "Double-date?"

_"Yes, Blaine,"_ Kurt said in over-exaggerated patient tones that nevertheless dripped with sarcasm, _"it's when two couples go out and hopefully have an enjoyable afternoon…"_

"Couple?" Blaine choked.

_"Yes, honey."_

"We're… a couple?"

_"Well, yes."_

"Since when?"

_"Since-God I don't have time for this, I need to get to class. I'll see you later this afternoon. Are we still meeting at Crazy Mocha?"_

"Um, yeah," Blaine managed around the abrupt change of subject. "Yeah, I'll be there." But in the middle of Kurt's rushed goodbye, Blaine cut him off again. "Wait, so if we're a couple, can we like, um. Can I kiss you? Or whatever."

Kurt gave a long-suffering sigh. _"If you must."_

And then he hung up.

Blaine did know how to learn from his mistakes. He went to Quinn first.

She hadn't even looked up from her binder when Blaine announced to her, "I have a boyfriend."

"You've had a boyfriend for nearly two months," Quinn said tiredly, turning a wary page.

"Why didn't anyone fucking _tell _me?"

"Because you're an idiot," Quinn replied. "You have a couple coming in for those locket tattoos in half an hour. Do you need a Valium or can I trust you to act like an adult and do your job?"

Santana was twice as useless, although she at least had the courtesy of looking at him in her response.

"No shit, he's been your boy for over a month."

"Wait, but does this mean we can have sex now? You think he'd-"

Santana just _looked _at him. "Oh my god. I'm not surprised and yet I'm still somehow disappointed. Just get out of my face."

Blaine stood outside the Crazy Mocha, twisting his hands in an agitated fashion, thinking himself in frantic circles. Couple? They were a _couple? _Since fucking when, was what Blaine wanted to know. When Kurt had bought him the first coffee? When Blaine invited him back for a movie that weekend and he hadn't even tried to get laid (Blaine had heard couples were boring like that)? When they'd exchanged numbers? _When_?

And more importantly, how did couples _act?_

Blaine was normally quite proud of the fact that's he'd never committed himself, but now he found his lack of experience in relationships quite detrimental. What was it that made them a couple? Did they have to call each other on a regular basis? How often did they need to text? Who bought dinner, did they split the bill, was he supposed to invite Kurt everywhere with him now? Would Kurt? Was Blaine supposed to kiss him on greeting? With tongue, a peck, _what? _Was hugging expected?

This was not what Blaine had signed up for.

But then there was Kurt, right there, with his perfectly imperfect face and walking up to him in a rush of busy commuters. Impish and glowing, tall and slim and walking to Blaine with a happy little smile on his face. Who had ever looked at Blaine and smiled, like they liked what they saw?

And it turns out Blaine didn't have to worry much about whether or not he was allowed to kiss him. Kurt took his face in his hands, leaned down that extra inch he had over him, and kissed Blaine on the mouth, solid and still and warm. It broke something at the bottom of Blaine's stomach, fused some vital parts of his brain in a discombobulated mess, he barely had the presence of mind to kiss back. Blaine could taste his breath, warm and minty, between the press of dry smooth lips. By his standards, it was the tamest kiss Blaine had ever been given. And it was the single most mild-alteringly sexy, gorgeous thing that had ever happened to him.

Blaine blinked his eyes open when Kurt drew back, smiling in a way that made Blaine think he'd never stopped. Kurt who was always so very careful with his personal space, with the things he gave, with _Blaine_. But there was a stiff set to his shoulders, his eyes even more shielded than usual. He didn't seem to be breathing much. He took Blaine's hand, jerked it into a nervous swing, and Blaine could feel his fingers tremble a bit as he asked hesitantly, "Buy me a mocha?"

Blaine blinked for several long moments, didn't reply in words, but squeezed Kurt's hand. The trembling subsided, and Blaine led the way into the café so that he could buy his boyfriend a mocha.

And that was that.


	5. Chapter 5

Apparently Blaine truly was some advanced species of idiot, because it turned out 'dating' Kurt meant pretty much the same thing as being 'friends' with Kurt. Only with tongue. A lot more tongue.

After the incident in the kitchen when Kurt had first paid him a rather furious visit, Blaine fully expected Kurt to be frigid about these things. Granting physical touches like they were a rare gift, slow to start and quick to stop. To conduct every physical touch on his own terms and not Blaine's.

But like so many things, Kurt did the exact opposite of what was expected.

Kurt seemed to take a quiet, easy happiness in looping his arm through Blaine's. Although he'd never admit it aloud, Blaine quite liked holding his hand. Kurt's fingers were long and soft as velvet. Kurt seemed to like it too, but more often than not they'd walk with Kurt's arm tucked into the crook of his elbow, which had its own benefits. It tucked their bodies close together as they walked, and Blaine could feel the warmth of him like a slow burning flame.

Kurt just seemed to like _touch_. His hands constantly tucking a stray curl behind Blaine's ear, rubbing his forearm, tucking his arm over and around Blaine's shoulders whenever Blaine would tug him close by his waist.

Yet sometimes, there was that little incessant thought niggling at the back of his mind…

Did Kurt find his ink unattractive?

Blaine found the idea, strangely enough, hard to believe. Kurt liked to kiss his temple, lips pressing warmly over the little _x _there. He would trail his fingers up along Blaine's arm in too specific a way to be coincidental, outlining by touch the tattoos over his arms. He didn't seem to be altogether turned off by the tattoos, either. The way he crooked his tongue along the shell of Blaine's ear, clinking the packed rings there. The very tiny tremors and the tightening of his body when Blaine very deliberately pressed his tongue ring against the protruding bone along his collar.

For all of his bravado, Kurt seemed content with Blaine's looks. More than content, perhaps. But still…

Nearly a month after Kurt kissed him outside the cafe, Blaine is hanging around Kurt's one Sunday morning before he has to head into his shop when the thought strikes him out of nowhere. Blaine had arrived at Kurt's request with breakfast that morning—a mocha and a grip, almond croissants, and a bear claw to split—in his most unfortunate pair of ratty jeans and a Pink Floyd t-shirt. Blaine isn't sure if Kurt knows that these were the clothes he'd woken up in, but from the despairing look Kurt had given him after a kiss good morning, Blaine was fairly sure Kurt had a pretty good guess.

Blaine is sprawled across his bed while Kurt bounced ideas off of him, shuffling through his burned CDs. "What about _Company?_" He was auditioning for a slot in a Winter Recital at his university, and ever since uncovering Blaine's love for Broadway, his boyfriend was playing the reluctant soundboard.

"Let me guess," Blaine muttered. "'_Being Alive'_?"

Kurt wrinkled his nose. "Hmm. Too overdone?"

Blaine shot him a look that Kurt didn't catch. "There was this amazing cover by some high schooler, he did a lovely piano accompaniment, and it was _actually—"_

"He cheated, then, he hit the high notes with the benefit of his balls never dropping."

"You're disgusting," Kurt pointed out lightly, abandoning the stack of jewel cases on the floor and standing. "I know it's in my iTunes library, where's my phone?"

Kurt looked towards his bedside table, but Blaine was most fortunately in the way. He had reclined back against the pillows, hands folded lightly over his stomach and legs crossed at the ankle.

Kurt's stare grew a little glassy. It then occurred to Blaine, as most of his hasty ideas do, that Kurt might have invited him over this early for a reason, what with Rachel gone for rehearsal all morning and neither of them with anything to do until noon.

Blaine locks eyes with him a long moment. He lifts a hand from underneath his hand, holds it out in Kurt's direction, and commands softly, "C'mere."

Kurt stares at it then, looking glad to break eye contact. He licks his lower lip, turning the pink skin shiny, and Blaine shifts pointedly on the bed.

"I think I left my phone in the living room," Kurt says abruptly, and hastily makes a retreat.

Blaine lifts his eyes to the bedside table where Kurt's phone is very obviously sitting, picks it up and fiddles with it a bit. He has three missed texts. He scowls. They're from _Adam. _Blaine wakes the phone from the lock screen just to get rid of the notification.

When Kurt returns a too-long minute later, Blaine flashes the phone at him. "Found it."

Kurt's mouth quirks upwards at it. "How astute of you to point that out now."

Smirking at the taunt in Kurt's voice, Blaine teases, "You gonna come get it from me?"

Kurt hesitates pointedly before crossing the distance to the bed, smile slipping from his face. He perches himself awkwardly upon the edge of the bed, staring at his hands and not at Blaine. Doesn't even look up when Blaine takes one of them in his own, just keeps avoiding his eye. But he does, hesitantly, squeeze Blaine's hand back.

"So…?" Blaine finally prompts. "I haven't heard that song in forever. You have _Company _on DVD right?" He isn't sure how he feels about seeing the look of relief on Kurt's face, but that he's done something right eases Blaine's mind for the time being.

* * *

It's with no small amount of irony that Blaine realizes he has no idea how long a couple has to wait before sleeping together. He'd heard the third date rule. He'd heard the one month rule. He'd heard meeting the _friends _rule. And if any one of them were true, he and Kurt were well past that stage.

He couldn't be the only one to find it strange. And as he was soon to learn, he wasn't.

It started off, as most disasters did, with Santana.

Kurt is in the kitchen, dumping the carryout boxes into the kitchen and fetching them some drinks, when Blaine gets the first text.

_Feliz navidad, bitch._ _Brit and I are xmas shopping. Whats ur boy like, big and sturdy or vibrating? He strikes me as a size queen._

Scowling, Blaine texts back a simple, _don't u fuckin dare_

_ I know its so hard to choose between the two. Both? Or is it you im getting this for?_

_ Seriously, fuck off and don't bother_

Kurt is coming out of the kitchen now with two beers, and Blaine pockets his phone. He expects Kurt to slide back to his side of the couch, but instead, he playfully straddles Blaine's lap, smirking crookedly at him. He jiggles the bottle carefully so as to not spill, and asks innocently, "Thirsty?"

"Yes," Blaine growls, making as if to snatch the bottle. When Kurt predictably pulls it away, Blaine catches the line of his jaw in his mouth and bites lightly. Kurt hums his appreciation, blindly reaching behind him to set the bottles down to free up his hands. He buries them in Blaine's hair, and damn if Blaine didn't fucking _love _that. Although he presumably had more experience with sex than Kurt by far, it was these little things that kept catching him by surprise. Nails scratching his scalp, hands massaging his biceps, his knees, pressing close with no further intention behind the notion than just feeling. Kurt wanted to touch for the simple pleasure of touching Blaine, and somehow the reality of that turned him on more than some guy ripping at his pants to skip ahead to the ending.

Blaine is working a soft little bruise right under Kurt's chin when he feels his phone buzz in his pocket. He ignores it, hands feeling up along Kurt's arched shoulders. It wasn't a particularly erogenous zone, but Blaine is fascinated by this entire universe of touching he wasn't accustomed to, and the way Kurt sunk lower into his lap was more than gratifying. Kurt has one hand down the back of his shirt, and is making the most delicious noises. He fucking _squeaks _when Blaine's hand goes lower, rubbing at the waistband of his jeans. When Kurt just arches more into it, Blaine lets his hand down to cup his ass, squeezing it and making Kurt moan, the blush going straight down his neck. Blaine chased down the heat with his tongue, so entirely focused on not stepping over any of Kurt's carefully drawn lines he isn't even noticing his phone buzz. But Kurt has his knee pressed into Blaine's pocket, and he pulls back to whisper, "Someone's popular."

Blaine groans, trying to tempt Kurt back. "It's just Santana being a bitch, it's fine." He lifts his face to meet Kurt in an open-mouthed kiss, his mouth already buzzing with warmth. Kurt was apparently feeling confident today, his tongue licking along Blaine's, flicking over the piercing and _damn that phone. _It interrupted Blaine's groan, and Kurt laughed softly.

Kurt kisses him once more, but it's a light peck and Blaine knows the moment is over. He sighs a bit as Kurt retracts from Blaine's lap to retrieve his beer and sit against the arm of the chair, swinging his legs over Blaine's lap, silently demanding a foot rub. Blaine does so one-handed, leaving it to Kurt to turn on their movie as he finally checks his phone.

_Dont tell me uve become one of those lame ass vanilla sex couples that think touching each other in ur Secret Place is the height of excitement. Lie to me if u are_

_ Omg u r_

_ Omg I told Quinn shes with brit and me she laughed so hard_

Blaine furiously texts back, _if u got some more urself u wouldn't be so hung up on kurt and mine so seriously fuck off_

_ O boo u got the D and now ur as pussy whipped as mike god how the mighty have fallen_

_ Last time I checked kurt had a dick. im not the one being dragged by their gf fucking Christmas shopping_

_ Which u know so well u can give me the size ill get u something nice when ur missing him_

"Everything okay?" Kurt asks, eyeing Blaine's glare curiously.

"Fine," Blaine mutters, and he blames that brief moment of distraction, and how he's still slightly horny, on what he sends next. _Well if u stopped riding my dick for five fucking seconds I could find out what his looks like, seriously piss off and stop being such a cockblock_

Blaine realizes, before the load bar on his screen is spent, before Santana could ever receive it, what a mistake he's made.

But she's too quick for him to somehow take it back. All she says is _omg_, and before he can text a scathing retort, Quinn texts him, _You and Kurt haven't had sex yet? _And Britany, _tanny said u haven't tuched his but yet can I tuch it_

"Who is that?" Kurt asks now. "Are you… growling or cursing? Who is that?" he repeats.

"Just Santana being a fucking bitch," Blaine snaps, but immediately massaging Kurt's foot a little harder in apology.

Kurt looks sympathetic. "Want me to text her? I'm quite a bit more eloquent with words than you."

Like fuck does Blaine want Kurt being within a five-mile radius of Santana after he'd dropped that bombshell, let alone talk to her. "The only thing she needs is a lobotomy, nothing you can do."

Kurt laughs a little, and it distracts Blaine momentarily. That was another thing it had taken a while to get used to. Kurt _laughing_, especially when he didn't lift a hand to cover his mouth. Kurt looked fucking adorable when he laughed like that, teeth showing and nose all bunched up…

His phone buzzed in his palm, and Blaine nearly threw it across the room.

Instead, he checked the conversation one more time. Santana had sent him a quick succession of increasingly insulting texts.

_Omg ur not answering u actually haven't fucked him yet_

_ Blaine what the fuck its been like 4 months thats practically a year do u need help? Do u need pamphlets a powerpoint? Viagra?_

_ Is he really as tight-assed as he looks and he just cant take it or what srsly give me something here_

Kurt's attention has returned to the movie, but nevertheless Blaine schools his face into as calm an expression as he can as he replies, _ talk about him like that again then you can get the fuck out of my shop. _Blaine doesn't regret it as he sends it. It was common knowledge that mixing business with personal vendettas was frowned upon, but fuck that, it was Blaine's shop and if this could get Santana to shut up…

_Christ use ur blue balls to cool it a bit I didn't mean that _

It wasn't strictly an apology, but it was the most Blaine could hope for.

_But srsly how far have u gotten_

Blaine put his phone on mute, set it aside, and lunged across Kurt's chest between his legs. Kurt laughed again, tucked his arms around Blaine's shoulders and kissed him through his hair and fuck who had ever done that before….

By the time the movie is over Blaine is half asleep and can't recall a single thing about it. Every now and then his phone buzzes but he ignores it, and Kurt doesn't question that. Just pets Blaine like some kind of cat, through his hair, the back of his neck, over his shoulders. He could lie here for hours and be perfectly find, smelling Kurt's skin and leeching his heat.

But the credits roll, Kurt shuts off the TV, and Blaine knows the night's over. It's nearly midnight. He doesn't want Kurt walking alone too late at night, and he knows better than to consider the possibility of Kurt staying the night. But selfishly, he drags it out as long as possible, much to Kurt's reluctant delight.

Blaine ends up half straddling him, pinning Kurt with his own weight, a feat made much more difficult with Kurt's body jolting in laughter beneath him. His mouth alternates between scolding Blaine and catching the skin of his neck between his teeth. Blaine fights to keep form rocking his hips every time Kurt does it, but it's a difficult battle. He doesn't want to fuck this up again. Blaine is fairly sure he's already reached the quota for how many times one person can fuck up before they're kicked to the proverbial curb indefinitely.

Blaine already knows Kurt won't stay, sees no point in making either of them uncomfortable by asking, and he leaves Kurt to gather his things while he runs to the bathroom. When he's finished he splashes cold water on his face, brushes damp fringe from his face, and looks at himself in the mirror. His eyes are dilated a bit, but the flush in his cheeks has cooled. He takes a few seconds to compose himself before leaving to tell Kurt good bye. And perhaps forestall him at the door a little longer.

But Kurt isn't there. Frowning, he heads back into the living room where Kurt still is, sitting where Blaine had left him. He'd switched the cable on, and had it on _Extreme Homemaker_.

"I thought you were heading out."

Kurt looked up at the sounds of Blaine's voice. "Hmm? Do you want me to?"

"…no," Blaine said truthfully. It was late, but Blaine wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. He settled back down on his end of the couch, and was instantly suspicious when Kurt turned off the TV. The sense only worsened when Kurt hesitantly slid over the couch cushion, chest pressed against Blaine's arm and a hand on his knee. It would have felt nice if it hadn't felt just a bit out of context. There was too much thought behind touches that should require no thinking at all.

Kurt leaned forward, eyes averting his own gaze, and kissed his cheek slowly, face warm where it met his skin. Blaine placed his hands on Kurt's hips and squeezed. When Kurt didn't stop, he slid them further back until he was cupping his ass, something that normally would have had Kurt backpedaling quicker than Blaine could process. But now Kurt just moaned, sinking further into Blaine's lap. The noise sounded more natural, and carefully, Blaine chanced reclining them back. Kurt was still seated stiffly on his lap.

Sighing a little, Blaine nudged his nose against Kurt's forehead. When Kurt had lifted his face, Blaine kissed him. He meant to keep it light, really he did, but Kurt was turning it dirty quick and Blaine didn't have the self-constraint to stop him. Like it had been for the past two hours his phone gave another jittering hum against the coffee table. But Kurt just _sucked on his tongue _and Blaine couldn't help it, his hips bucked up and jolted Kurt on his lap.

Kurt stayed where he was, smoothing his hands over Blaine's neck, kissing him with quivering lips. Blaine slowly retracted his hands, but then Kurt was reaching behind him to capture his wrists and push them back, and then further down to cup the back of his thighs, and Blaine wasn't one to complain but…

_When did my phone get on the coffee table?_

His phone buzzed again, and Blaine yanked his hands from Kurt's slackened grip. It was that Kurt still tried to kiss him that gave it away. But Blaine twisted away, pushed at Kurt until he was stumbling off of him. Blaine stood in a hurry and swiped his phone from the table, fingers feeling oddly cold. "Did you move my phone?"

Kurt didn't answer, but couldn't quite pull off the innocent look.

"Fuck, did you look at my _phone_?"

Kurt was twisting his hands in front of him. "It wouldn't stop buzzing for the past three hours…"

"And you didn't just fucking ask because?"

"I did and you didn't answer!" Kurt snapped, shoring up the defenses, his guard snapping up like a fortress behind his eyes.

But Blaine wasn't having it, standing up from the couch himself, anger like a pulsing life force in his veins, pounding so hard that it hurt. It did hurt. The utter lack of trust, feeling like he was standing against the huge, unknown force that was Kurt's constant paranoid assumptions. "So you thought it'd be okay to just look for yourself?"

"God, stop over reacting!"

"Over… Kurt, fuck, is that why you were suddenly horny as fuck? Huh?" Blaine licked his lip a little, still tasting Kurt's tongue. Because if that was why... That's not what he wanted. That hadn't ever been what he wanted, and most especially wasn't what he wanted now.

"I don't even know why I'm the one getting yelled at! That's what you wanted, right?"

"When the hell did I say that was what you wanted!? When did I ever give the slightest—"

Kurt was looking a little unsure now, his posture still tense to the extreme but there was a nervous quiver to his words now. "With Santana, you said—"

"Jesus fucking Christ, Kurt, I was trying to_ shut her up _but you don't even fucking care, do you?" Blaine roared, his worst assumptions confirmed. It wasn't hard to pinpoint just why he felt so angry. He'd felt used before, had himself used plenty of people, but this was the only time it had ever _hurt_, and that in and of itself was too hard to deal with. "You just went right the fuck ahead and looked for what you wanted to see, you always fucking do that, you make up your mind on what I'm thinking before I can even _blink."_

"That's not true…"

"I'm _not that guy_!" Blaine finally shouted, and he felt he had to scream it so often that he wasn't even sure of the fact himself anymore and that made it even worse. The indecision and doubt that Kurt was drilling deep into Blaine's veins due to his own damn anxieties. "I'm _not _ and I don't know who the fuck you think I am, but I ain't him and if that's all you're expecting then you're sure as fuck gonna be disappointed."

"I know… Blaine, I know you're not." There was a definite shake to his words now, and he held up his hands placating in front of himself, as if trying to calm Blaine through gesture alone. "God, look, I'm sorry, I know you're not."

"Stop fucking bullshitting me and just tell me what the fuck you expect from me! What do I have to _do. _Or are you just waiting for me to fuck it all up to rub it in my face?"

"I don't, I don't, please stop shouting and talk to me."

"I don't want to _fucking _talk when you don't listen to me anyway! When are you going to start believing I'm _not that guy."_

"I do!"

"Then fucking show it!"

"I do," Kurt repeats empathetically, walking up to him and cupping his face in two quivering hands, but Blaine batted them away.

"Fuck this," Blaine snapped. "Just get out."

"Blaine."

"Kurt," Blaine sighed, the fight suddenly falling right out of him and all he was left with was the burning desire to be alone. "I'm serious. Get the fuck out of my apartment."

Trusting Kurt to show himself out, Blaine left him standing there and walked into his bedroom, slamming the door shut behind him and collapsing onto the bed's edge. He listened carefully. There were footsteps outside his doorstep. A few minutes later, the front door opened and shut. Blaine didn't realize he was tired until he collapsed onto the mattress. But he didn't sleep a wink all night.

* * *

In the end, there is far less fanfare than their constant, never-ending tumultuous arguments.

But before that, something was ascertained to be true. And that was that Sebastian Smyth was an asshole.

Sebastian was a very specific type of dick, sort of like Blaine. They were either agreeable to you or not, and there wasn't much middle ground to navigate through. And his appointment had fallen at the worst possible time, because Blaine was still pissed the fuck off.

It had been a full three days since their fight when Blaine had ordered Kurt out of his apartment. Kurt had texted him the following day, called at night when Blaine hadn't answered. His phone had been a constant buzz the whole day, and Santana must have heard from Rachel what her stunt had caused because she left Blaine alone about it. Quinn wordlessly cleared his schedule for the day. Blaine kept himself locked in his private room, sketching out rough, angry tattoos in nothing but burning ink, more _Black Sabbath_ than _The_ _Rolling Stones_, _Fiona Apple _rather than _Frou Frou. _

Kurt called him five times the following day, but Blaine ignored those, and the texts. Every time it was Blaine going to him. And he would eventually, when he could do it less angrily. If he had to be bitter, he wouldn't be angry too. Because Blaine liked Kurt. It was a simple thing to imagine, but Blaine could count on one hand the number of things he liked without reservations. Tattoos, New York, music, and Kurt. Everything else came with hang-ups and strings and red tape, but Kurt didn't. He just was, and no matter how extraordinarily difficult he was, how stubborn and untrusting and unpredictable and fragile, Blaine _liked _him. All the time, in every way.

Kurt did nothing the third day, and Blaine wondered if he was pouting as he himself sulked through his morning session. His client said nothing, was quiet himself, like he always was. He came once a year. On his left shoulder, directly over where his heart lay, was a simple little love heart, rich in reds and pinks, not bigger than Blaine's thumb. It was one of the first tattoos Blaine had ever done since moving to New York seven years ago. He'd been an apprentice at Puck's shop then, only just starting to take on small projects. But the man had seen some of Blaine's practice works on orange skins littered around the desk, and quietly requested it. His name was Will, and he was the somber sort.

His wife had died four months prior, and he still wore the ring. A year to the day later, Will found Blaine again, and had him ink a ring around the heart. Yet another year after that, when Blaine opened his own shop, Will tracked him down again and got the second ring.

Seven years later and Blaine was drawing in the sixth ring around the heart, and it was now more apparent what they were. Drawn with barely quarter of an inch of room between each, the lines ran like age lines in a tree trunk around the small heart. Blaine didn't know how they'd manage it when Will ran out of shoulder room, but he sincerely hoped the man would be around long enough to figure it out.

Blaine hadn't even finished swiping off the blood and excess ink from Will's shoulder before he decided to call Kurt on his break. He stared at the tattoo before him, how it aged before his eyes, and that lonely little heart. Maybe he'd surprise Kurt after class with a mocha. He'd even remember to make it nonfat.

But before that, Sebastian was a dick and coming in to get some shading done on massive tattoo Blaine had been working on for six months. He certainly had the money to complete the piece in a much more condensed timeframe. Blaine had a sneaking suspicion as to why he chose not to.

Blaine was very suspicious this week. What made it worse was the fact that most of his suspicions were coming true.

Sebastian showed up fifteen minutes late to his twelve 'o' clock appointment, by which point Blaine had nearly chewed his snake bites out. Kurt was done his music history lecture at four forty-five, and if Blaine wanted to catch him he didn't have time to fuck around. Sebastian had the tendency to draw appointments out, and this time was no different. Sebastian made a show of removing his shirt, of unbuttoning his pants only to just sit there, straddling the bench, chatting over outlines and shading like he knew anything about _anything_, like this whole conversation was some sort of strip tease.

Sebastian's tattoo was something of a collage, and normally once they got going and Sebastian shut up Blaine quite enjoyed working on it. It was like a deconstructed version of the stereotypical tattoo—skulls, roses, nonsensical tribal patterns. But the mess was highlighted in bright gold and bold black lines, layered upon over the years with whatever Sebastian felt like. This month, apparently, he was feeling musical. Blaine found himself with the sheet music to _Bohemian Rhapsody _on his knee as reference.

"So you're quiet," Sebastian said once Blaine had moved off his ribs. He'd unbuttoned his pants so they slung low down his hips, even when Blaine had insisted he wouldn't be inking that far down. And it wasn't just for personal reasons. The work looked quite complete and he was apprehensive to add anything more aggressive to it.

Blaine grunted a nonverbal reply back, squinting at his notes and then back up.

"What've you been up to anything?"

"Not really," Blaine replied. He never rushed his work, although he was sorely tempted to today. Usually doing tattoos had some sort of calming effect, but it wasn't today. The gun buzzed angrily in his grip, and his grip felt sweaty in the gloves. He wiped with the antiseptic perhaps a little too roughly, but Sebastian was too macho to say anything about it. Blaine shamelessly took advantage of that.

"Popular guy like you?" Sebastian went on smoothly, glancing down at his side, stretching unnecessarily in the seat. "I don't believe it. Santana said you guys had that thing last month."

Blaine was assuming he meant the annual holiday party they had every winter, when their business tended to edge into dead territory. The reputation of both himself and his artists was fairly widespread throughout the inked community, but Quinn had always insisted on hosting a sort of event in his shop once a year. It was more of a way for them to show off their more popular works from the year past, and their schedule always ended up being booked solid for the next season. Spring was a good season. "No, it's next month."

"Maybe I'll come," Sebastian offered.

"Mh."

"So, been seeing anyone interesting?" Tired of Blaine's two-word answers, Sebastian had clearly decided to get right to the point.

Blaine shrugged however, not wanting to drag anything of Kurt in front of Sebastian. He ejected the tip of the gun onto the tray and injecting a new one before loading it with white, eager to finish the highlights and get Sebastian the fuck out of his chair.

"Aww. No one? I find that one hard to believe, too."

"Watch me just rush to change your opinion."

"Well if you're just so free so often, you should come out with me for drinks some time. What are you doing this weekend?"

A few months ago, Blaine would have accepted. He wasn't in the habit of turning people down, and he hadn't turned Sebastian down more than once. But…

"Pass," Blaine said, rapidly swiping delicate little shadows beneath the tips of the notes. He left the music bars as they were, a burnt rusted orange that correlate well with the red and grays of the skull.

"Busy?" Sebastian prodded.

Blaine answered firmly, "Not interested."

"Ouch. You've been plenty interested before."

"And I'm not now, and you're done," Blaine snapped, slamming the tattoo gun loudly on the tray and reached for a fresh cloth, drenching it with ointment and rubbing roughly at the tattoo.

But Sebastian was looking at something over his shoulder. "Can I help you?"

Blaine looked over in that direction and the shock of seeing Kurt there didn't register for a moment. But there he was, looking especially out of place today in some trim little blazer and bow tie, skinny jeans and boots strapped up his shins, hair carefully swept back in spikes today. Tall, a little rough, slim, delectable.

Blaine swallowed. "Hey." It was then he saw Kurt was carrying two cups of takeaway coffee. It reminded him of the last time he'd seen Kurt in his shop, when he'd been carrying much of the same. "Um, I'm almost finished up here if you wanted to…"

Kurt nodded, glancing at Sebastian once before giving Blaine a tight smile. "I'll be up there with Quinn."

Blaine watched him walk away, and his frustrations with Sebastian suddenly seemed so trivial.

Until the asshole opened his mouth again. "Who's the twink?"

Blaine glared at him. "That was my boyfriend," he snapped, and the effect it had was two-fold. The look of surprise on Sebastian's face was most gratifying. But just saying the words, hearing the resolve in his own voice, served to empty out any residual bitterness stewing in Blaine's stomach.

"Oh," Sebastian said, tones dripping in obvious disapproval. "Really?"

"You're done," Blaine repeated coldly, yanking off his gloves and throwing them into the small trash can he kept under his table. "You know the drill. Quinn will handle the payments. And for fuck's sake stop getting shit done to that," Blaine added as he stuck on another pair of gloves and unrolled a pad of fresh gauze.

"Want a picture?"

"Not really," Blaine said honestly, taping the gauze in place with quick efficiency. "But I'm not kidding, if you're in here again you're getting something somewhere else, maybe something on your fat head, but anything else on that and it'll end up a clusterfuck."

Sebastian appeared nonplussed, standing before shrugging on his shirt. "Clusterfuck," he muttered, glancing over Blaine's shoulder to where he knew Kurt was. "Right. Well if you ever get bored," he said pointedly.

"Get out. Now," Blaine groaned, jerking his gloves off and capping the ink bottles back up.

Sebastian rolled his eyes and began to pick around his pocket for his wallet as he walked up. Blaine yanked an antiseptic wipe from its pack and quickly patted down the chair, keeping an eye on the front. Kurt must have listened to the dismissal because he was making his way back. He swept by Sebastian as he left towards the front desk. Kurt gave him an unreadable look as he passed. It was impossible to tell what look Sebastian returned it with from this angle.

"Old boyfriend?"

"I've never really done boyfriends," Blaine reminded him, dumping the used ink caps into the trash can as well. He liked things neat; he had a routine. "Before you, I mean. I just… you know." Blaine trailed off awkwardly, abandoning his work station to sit back into his chair again. He could hear Sebastian at the front desk, but all his focus was on the man in front of him.

Kurt glanced away, because he didn't know. Blaine didn't feel guilty. He had nothing to be guilty over. But it made him feel a little small inside, watching Kurt be so very unsure of himself.

When Kurt reached him, and handed him his coffee, Blaine shifted in the parlor stool a little bit to get comfortable, expecting Kurt to sit and lecture like he was overly prone on doing. But Kurt surprised him again, setting down his own coffee to brace his hand on Blaine's shoulders as he leaned in to kiss him. His lips were cool and a little chapped, not what Blaine was used to at all, but as Kurt pulled back Blaine muttered, "Just come here."

Kurt sighed a little, as if in relief, and perched himself onto Blaine's knee, tilting his head to fit into the crook of Blaine's neck, breathing against his ink. Blaine gripped him tightly around the waist, pressing his nose into Kurt's hair.

"I called," Kurt offered after a long few minutes of silence, not lifting his head from Blaine's shoulder.

"I know," Blaine answered.

"We fight a lot."

"Yeah."

Quietly, "I'm sick of it."

Blaine didn't reply, just smoothed his shoulders. He didn't know why he didn't feel nervous at that, but he felt sure of something he could quite define yet. Only that little touches like these were still a new sort of strange

"Sometimes, I don't really know if what I have… is what you want. And I can." Kurt breathed. "I project a lot, I know. I'd understand if you weren't really interested in 'boyfriends'. I'm just a silly romantic and… not what you're used to." Blaine wanted to interrupt, but Kurt was finally talking and he couldn't. "You probably like what you had with… other men, before. Like Sebastian. Without any of the drama and bitching and complications and—"

Blaine had to stop him then, leaning back to look down at him. "Hey. Look at me."

When Kurt wouldn't, Blaine hooked his fingers under Kurt's chin and tilted his face up. He wondered if Kurt could feel the callouses there, the little nubs of skin roughened beneath the gun, his life's work scarring his hands in ways invisible to all but touch.

He held him a little too tightly, maybe. But Kurt was tolerant towards the strangest of things.

"Sebastian means shit to me," Blaine said slowly, watching each word drop into Kurt's eyes, and the physical evidence of the trust shining back meant something. Perhaps Blaine didn't quite know yet what that something was, but he was working at it. Because Kurt was tolerant, and more patient than Blaine deserved. "And so does anyone who ever would have come before you. Understand?"

Kurt gave him a slightly sardonic look then, and Blaine expected him to shift out of his lap. Instead, he lifted his hands to grip Blaine's wrist gently. Instantly he loosed his hands, fingers gently skimming Kurt's high, sharp cheekbones. The skin was dizzyingly soft.

"I know," Kurt said. "Who would prefer that over me? He smelled like the clearance section on Amazon."

Blaine snorted, suddenly grinning. Kurt matched it with a small smile of his own, although it wasn't as full as it could be. "He really does."

Kurt took a breath, and muttered, "I understand. I knew, before, I just… get that way, sometimes. You've been putting up with it, but I'm trying to get like that. I just get that way sometimes. I know it's stupid and childish—"

"It's not stupid," Blaine interrupted. Truthfully, something warm flooded him to think of Kurt jealous, but he knew jealousy wasn't it. It was trust, and Kurt wasn't the one Blaine would have expected to have problems in that area in this relationship, but here they were and he couldn't figure out how to fix it. Had, in fact, given up on trying. Some day Kurt would. It could be tomorrow, it could be a year from now. For now, he could kiss him, and that was plenty. His resilient, stubborn presence was enough.

Blaine did kiss him though, sliding his hands back into Kurt's hair to tilt his face into it. Kurt went gladly, kissing back almost greedily, looking for something. Blaine didn't know what that was, but he'd give it. In a heartbeat, through any means, Blaine would give it freely.

Kurt broke it off too soon, but he was grinning that dorky little smile Blaine loved, the one that showed the tips of his teeth, so it was okay. "You take my breath away," he panted against Blaine's mouth, and Blaine felt dizzy for how hopelessly gone he was.

But Kurt wasn't done. "You do, every day. The way you understand people. Your passion. Your _art_." Kurt glances around him with a look on his face Blaine hadn't seen Kurt regard his shop with before. "The way you… are with me. You're always so patient when I know you've hardly exercised much of it before. Thank you."

Kurt was staring into Blaine's eyes in a way he hadn't before. Clearly and without reservations, like he was finally _looking _at Blaine instead of a projection of what he thought he'd see. Blaine felt stunted. Not pressured, but like there was a certain expectation of him that he'd filled and hadn't known about.

"So, um, Santana's getting everyone together at Gizzeppi's tonight for drinks in an hour," Blaine finally muttered, scratching at the back of his head. "It's pretty dead in here. Would you wanna go with me? They're probably doing karaoke afterwards." Blaine liked karaoke. He liked singing, liked singing directly and pointedly at Kurt, making him laugh and squirm under the attention.

"No."

Blaine tried not to let the disappointment show on his face. He thought it was best accomplished by looking away, picking up a notebook from the table just to give his hands something to do.

Suddenly there was a hand grabbing his with a sort of purpose. "No," Kurt repeated. "I'd rather go to your place."

Blaine swallowed when he looked back at Kurt, fully expecting to see that frightened, resigned look on his face. But Kurt met his eye with confidence, solidity, and no small smart of heat. Blaine had to swallow again to wet his mouth enough to reply. "Okay." In the end, there was no fanfare, no dramatic proclamations, no true build up to speak of.

But it was enough. And that was that.

* * *

Getting back to Blaine's place was a blur in that he was hyper-aware of Kurt's presence through two subway rides, but the next day wouldn't remember a moment from between when Kurt had cornered him with that _look _in this shop, to when he had Kurt half naked in the hallway of his apartment.

Blaine wasn't known for his finesse. Kurt was very much the romantic type, but he didn't seem to be complaining.

Blaine still had Kurt's undone bowtie in one hand as the other ripped the buttons of his shirt open. He kissed and sucked his collarbone to make Kurt shake in his arms, he wanted that, wanted the cling of Kurt's arms dragging him down and under.

It took little time and not much bush beating to get them to this point, all things considered, but then Kurt had his shirt in his hand and how was Blaine the more naked one? Kurt was taller, had to bend a little to lick Blaine's inked bowtie with his hot little tongue.

"Kurt," Blaine growled, yanking his shirt from his pants and felt with sure hands how tension tight Kurt's stomach was. Blaine's knees hit the floor before the bowtie. Kurt yelped when he felt Blaine's tongue _drag _along his navel before he pinched the skin between his teeth and bit down hard enough to bruise.

And Kurt, calm poised romantic Kurt, cursed loudly as Blaine sucked at the skin like he was trying to pull it off the bone.

Blaine had the button to his jeans open and the zipper halfway down before Kurt was pulling him to his feet, and they were locked momentarily in a flurry of lips and tongue, and the occasional unfortunate clip of teeth. Blaine pushed him backwards, they tripped and almost fell twice, their bodies tugging along the wall like a dirty promise.

Kurt tugged off his own shirt, and took the liberty of backing himself into the bed and onto it. Blaine followed, pushing the sheets off the mattress and Kurt's hands off his pants in favor of divesting Kurt of his.

"Impatient," Kurt claimed ironically, but let himself be undressed, eyes slipping shut as Blaine feasted himself.

Kurt had his legs pressed together, so Blaine was forced to straddle him as he mapped his chest with his tongue. He tested with teasing suction the sensitivity of Kurt's nipples, and garnered very favorable results. Hands everywhere, and he was being impatient, he knew he was, but they had all the time to drag this out. Blaine didn't realize until now just how bad he had it until he had _Kurt_.

Blaine did take a moment then to pull back and look, feeling like he needed just a second to compose himself. Kurt took the chance to try and undo Blaine's pants for him, but it was easy for Blaine to pin his wrists to the side. Kurt wriggled a moments, playfully and with a little heated look let Blaine have his fill.

Kurt looked even taller without clothes. The shallow curvature of his hips, the way his muscles rose in gorgeous, seamless ridges below his pale skin. Kurt wasn't muscular, but he was lean and solid, a graceful sort of masculinity and vitality that made Blaine's mouth water. And further down, pressed into the raised crotch of his own jeans, Kurt's erection was curved softly up, slanted a bit to the left, and Blaine released one of Kurt's wrists just to touch.

Kurt tensed a bit when a hand wrapped around him, but relaxed so quickly afterwards Blaine hardly took notice. He stroked a slow, tortuous rhythm, breathing deeply. Everything had escalated so quickly that he felt dizzy.

Kurt, too, seemed to be cooling. Desire and want filled his gaze with a nearly palpable heat, but now he used his free hand to run up Blaine's arm slowly, humming and thrusting into Blaine's fist.

"How is it?" Blaine asked raggedly, needing some sort of confirmation, for Kurt to start talking, to give up whatever secrets he held, the key to unwinding him..

Blinking up at him as if misunderstanding the question, Kurt tugged Blaine's head down to kiss him again. The angle forced Blaine to release his grip, so instead he ground his hips slowly down, purpose clear. Kurt's mouth froze against his for a second too long before he was kissing with twice the fervor. But it was enough to distract Blaine a bit, to make him rethink things through a moment. They didn't have to see it through. They had all the time in the world to try everything, it didn't have to be blown tonight. There was no need to indulge in that fantasy Blaine had refused to succumb to, the one that tugged at his mind when there was nothing left to distract it…

Kurt was undoing his pants though, and Blaine was gone.

Suddenly nothing seemed enough, and all Blaine wanted was to crash and burn. To take all at once, to sate the inferno enough to let it kindle and burn. His hands were too rough as they gripped Kurt's hips, he knew, but his partner seemed to be in just as much of a rush. With his shins he shuffled Blaine's pants down just low enough for him to kick them off. Raw skin made it worse. Fingers were tucking themselves into heated flesh too quickly, but Blaine couldn't _care _because even this felt different, every touch felt new and unexplored, like his fingertips had never brushed another man.

Kurt continued to rock in unpredictable patterns from languid smooth angles to tense rigidity. But in either state he was hot and gripping, fingers in Blaine's hair and mouth to his throat, sucking and biting at the first slick push inside. Blaine was sure that in his rush he'd left the cap off of the lube, it would probably spill onto the sheets, but then Kurt's legs spilled onto the sheets and he moaned _loud _into Blaine's breastbone as he found with blind touch the spot that cracked him like spun glass.

"Blaine," Kurt grunted. "A little more…."

"Mh," Blaine breathed, slowing his fingers a little, holding them steady inside for Kurt to feel and clench around. There were condoms in the drawer that Blaine needed to find. Kurt licked his shoulder, then up his neck, over his chin, curling around his ear. Blaine kissed his cheek, something he'd never done in bed, but it felt more intimate than anywhere he'd ever kissed someone. He stroked him steadily with both hands, good and smooth and firm, until Kurt unclenched a little to ease the resistance.

Kissing was so very absurdly good like this, and Kurt was so generous with it. Warm, wet, wanting. Wanting _Blaine_. He felt like solid gold between Kurt's legs, like something priceless, like _someone_.

Eventually he withdrew his hand from between Kurt's quivering legs and felt around for the bottle, shifting himself onto his elbows to touch gazes with Kurt. He never asked before, had always decided, but it felt proper to ask. Fuck Kurt had broken him. "How do you want it?" Blaine murmured into the hollow of his throat, gusting hot breath over dampened lips and watching the swallow of Kurt's throat.

"…how?" Kurt panted in surprise, hands scrabbling at the sheets and gritting his teeth because Blaine's other hand had never stopped pulling. The fingers of his right hand traced quickly up before pressing at him _there_, where he was so stretched and wet; every muscle in Kurt's body froze again.

"Yeah," Blaine murmured, pushing a little harder and massaging in light circles at his flushed entrance. "How do you like it?" Blaine didn't want to fuck this up, he wanted it perfect for him. More than he wanted Kurt, more than he wanted to unwind the way all of his muscles seemed to have knotted themselves, he wanted it good for Kurt. He wanted it so good Kurt would crack beneath him, show Blaine that hidden vulnerability he always kept so carefully hidden away.

Blaine could see him swallow again, but was unable to resist this time. He chased the movement with his tongue and fingers abandoning their position to fondle his sac instead. Kurt relaxed just slightly under him, the fluidity returning to his hips as he rocked upwards into Blaine.

"I don't know," Kurt finally answered, hands trembling as they pushed through sweaty curls and scratched at his scalp. "On… mh, on my back?"

"Was that a question?" Blaine leaned back a bit to meet Kurt's eyes. Eclipsed in the dark, they looked completely gray. "Just… how do you usually do it? I want to do what you like. I'm being a _gentleman_." He said the last word with an exaggerated grimace, aiming for a laugh. But Kurt's eyes darted to the side, and he bit at his lip hard. His hands clenched nervously at Blaine's shoulders. "Kurt?"

He wouldn't return his gaze to Blaine's. "However is, it's fine, it's—just on my, not on my, erm, knees. I want to see you."

Blaine frowned. "Alright, but… Kurt, you sound sort of… I don't want to be pushy, seriously, we can stop if you want, just say the word, but. I want to do it _right_, when you usually… are you on top, or something? What is it you _like_? I mean, I know you've done this before, right?"

Blaine smiled again, to show he was half-joking. He was wrong-footed again, though, when no answer was forthcoming. Realization slapped him harder than the man beneath him had upon his very first visit to this apartment. His hand frozen, and suddenly Kurt was panicking. Completely naked, it was even more behooving.

"Is this a turn-off for you?" Kurt stammered, clearly trying and failing to play it off as nothing. "Not to play to any stereotypes, but I thought that the opposite was true, actually…"

Kurt looked so unsure and miserable and Blaine was an absolute dick. "No, no but fuck. Kurt, hell, I don't want to... to fuck this up for you. For your first time, Jesus Christ…"

"Virginity is just an outdated construct enforced by society in order to incriminate open sexuality and make commodities of the human body."

Too many big words when Blaine still had an erection. "What?"

Kurt kissed him, open mouthed and hot, tongue wet in Blaine's mouth and he had to swallow the noise down as Kurt finally wrapped legs tight around his hips, arms about his shoulders, and so much _skin _that he could finally _touch_.

But for the first time since meeting him it didn't feel enough. Blaine felt shaky wherever they touched suddenly, and within the clasp of Kurt's long body Blaine suddenly felt very much on the spot. He was aware he'd been the first for a few people, he must have been, but this was _Kurt _and he had so many questions at once. Why, and how, and most importantly _why Blaine._

"Blaine," Kurt sighed, hips bucking and legs collapsing wide around him. Blaine settled more firmly, suddenly unsure of what to do. His hand still felt damp, Kurt's body loose and pliant and rolling beneath him like the careening waves of the ocean. The smells and the tastes were familiar but different, and he wasn't sure how to go about any sort of routine. There was no routine with Kurt. He shattered every single one of them. It wrecked Blaine from the inside out.

"I can't ruin this," Blaine whispered, harsh breathed and wild. He suddenly dearly wished he'd taken his piercings out. Kurt's first time shouldn't be with someone with triple the numbers of holes in their body than they'd been born with.

"I trust you," Kurt muttered. "Idiot. It's fine, I want it."

But Blaine shook his head. "I can't ruin this," he repeated, and this time Kurt seemed to get it.

Kurt held Blaine's face close to his, sharing breath. Kurt liked to do this, it seemed. To frame his face, as if committing every moment like a photograph. "It's okay," Kurt whispered. "It's okay."

It didn't feel okay, but maybe like they were getting there.

Kurt tensed again when Blaine pushed with new purpose, encouraging with his hands for Kurt to tilt his hips just like that. And to be sure, he slipped and felt with fingertips the inside of him, just one more time, with a new perspective. Flesh that had never been touched. And virginity had never been a _thing _for him, quite the opposite really.

But feeling Kurt shudder loose around him, unfurling beneath new sensations, gave the whole experience a brand new feel for it. Like it wasn't just Kurt who was facing something new and terrifying. Kurt gripped him tightly around his shoulders, keened when Blaine slid his fingers free and fell so very quiet when they shifted positions. Blaine kissed him, kissed him the whole time, afraid that if he stopped he'd lose his nerve and his momentum and _fuck everything up over again_…

"Oh," Kurt whispered into his mouth, shivering against him and then around him.

_Oh, _Blaine thought, holding Kurt in and down as he pressed and moved and _oh_.

They weren't kissing anymore, just breathing with their mouths together, Kurt so tense with trying not to be. Indecision in his eyes, like he was thinking very hard about something. Blaine couldn't tell if it was him who groaned or Kurt as he pulled and pushed slowly, building it up to break them both apart, welding their bodies tightly together. Kurt's body suddenly became pliant and smooth, arching wider as in his gaze Blaine saw Kurt make some sort of realization.

"Blaine," Kurt whispered again, panting and arching, the spot where they joined flared with heat and some residual ache. "Move for me," Kurt commanded quietly, firmly, and Blaine was but a slave to obey.

* * *

The shifting of the mattress jarred Blaine awake, and this at least he was familiar with. He was so attuned to the customs that Blaine didn't even try and make Kurt stay as he slid from the bed, obviously trying to keep very quiet about it. His brain was too muzzy with sleep to contemplate how anything could ever be anything different.

Kurt was leaving, now. That was okay. Blaine understood. He'd do the same, obviously. Leaving was their _thing_.

Blaine heard the soft padding of feet, the click of a door, and rolled over to face the wall. He shut his eyes and willed himself back to sleep, feeling quite cold indeed.

* * *

There was no one in the bed with him when Blaine woke that morning.

He lay there for a long moments, staring blankly at the clock. The curtains were drawn, but vague shadows of sunlight still shown through. It was just after nine, and normally he'd roll right back over to sleep. That's what he did on Saturdays, he slept and slept the night before off. But there was nothing to sleep off this time, and he awoke as suddenly as if someone had slapped him.

There was no one there in the apartment but him. It was as quiet as the city ever allowed. Just another day, containing 24 hours to fill before the next started up. No different than the day before, not the day a fortnight ago. Blaine could believe that normalcy, that he felt no different now than any other day. He believed, inexplicably, that this was how he wanted to wake up. Without an obligation hogging the shower, a too-warm body hoarding the sheets, someone borrowing the shirt he'd really been wanting to wear that day. On the rare occasion that someone had stayed at Blaine's, and he could only recall three instances, they were up and out before he went to the kitchen to put the coffee on brew.

This was what Blaine wanted. And if it took him just these extra few minutes to believe that, then that was fine too.

That was when he smelled the coffee.

Frowning, Blaine sat up in bed. Sniffing cautiously at the air, he also caught a whiff of cooking food, but still no noise.

He looked over the edge of the bed. Kurt's clothes were gone.

They were instead folded neatly on the dresser.

He lurched from the bed, hands scrambling between the sheets but found something. Grumbling, he shuffled to the dresser and pulled out a drawer, grabbed a pair of sweats, and pulled them on.

The living room wasn't any livelier than the noise level indicated. Kurt was there, curled up on the couch in his boxer briefs and one of Blaine's old university t-shirts. Blaine hadn't been planning on wearing it that day. He was cradling a chipped mug in two pale, long-fingered hands, and there was an empty plate on the coffee table in front of him.

Kurt made no indication that he noticed Blaine's arrival, so he paid Kurt in kind and went in search of coffee. He found half a pot's worth on the burner, and in a seldom used skillet several triangular pieces of French toast. He poured himself a cup of coffee, grabbed a few slices, and made his way to the couch with the corner of a slice between his teeth.

Kurt finally looked up when Blaine sat beside him. He blinked sleepily, and Blaine nearly choked. His hair was a wreck, the skin under his eyes a little puffy. Long, long bare legs with pink-toed feet. He looked _fluffy_, Blaine felt he could just die in that moment and be perfectly content to go.

"You're not going to put anything on that?"

"Don't have anything."

"You have honey in the cupboard."

"I do?"

Kurt gave a long-suffering sigh. "Barbarian."

Blaine polished off his breakfast quickly, and in the meanwhile Kurt got up to freshen his cup of coffee. By the time he was back, Blaine had finished and was quietly sipping at his mug. When Kurt hesitated, he looked up. Kurt seemed to be eyeing the couch, or perhaps more specifically the middle cushion that had just been separating them.

Rolling his eyes, Blaine grumbled, "I don't bite, get down here." He thought he heard Kurt mutter, "You do, too," but then he was curling up along the center of the couch, his long, warm lean side pressing into Blaine's. There were bruises on his neck that didn't make Blaine horny so much as content, assuaged. And maybe a little horny.

Blaine shifted his arm to settle around his shoulders, and Kurt's head rested on his chest. He wondered if Kurt could hear his heart, thundering so loud he might get sick. Blaine reached for the remote, clicked the TV on, and kissed Kurt through his sleep mused hair. It was just so _fluffy_, there was so much of it, no wonder it always looked styled to within an inch of its life.

Kurt was letting him see it like this.

Blaine flipped to _Lifetime_, and imagined he could feel Kurt smile. He felt it in the way Kurt relaxed into him. His heart beat settled a warm and safe rhythm in his chest.

There was a _Project Runway_ marathon on, which Blaine enjoyed for the drama. Kurt enjoyed it for… well, for the drama also, if he were to be honest.

They hate-watched it through the morning. Neither of them got up for another cup of coffee.


End file.
